Underwater Hunters

Bladderworts are the fastest carnivorous plants on Earth. They maintain tiny low-pressure chambers that, when a trigger hair is brushed, suck in prey in less than one millisecond — 100 times faster than a Venus flytrap.

Pitcher plants use the simplest approach: a slippery-rimmed tube filled with digestive fluid. Insects landing on the rim slide in and cannot climb back out. The largest tropical pitchers, like Nepenthes rajah, can hold over a liter of fluid and occasionally trap small vertebrates such as shrews.