Counting the Catch

Once the flytrap has snapped shut, it keeps a running tally. Each further touch from struggling prey ramps up the response, releasing more digestive enzymes and more acid to break down a bigger meal.

The plant is not just reacting — it is gauging how much food it has caught and matching its effort to the size of the catch.

Behind that timing is a simple memory trick: calcium waves. Each trigger-hair touch sets off a calcium signal that fades over seconds, so the trap closes only when a second touch arrives before the first signal dies away — a biological AND-gate.

A plant that counts, times, and tallies shows that computation does not require a brain.