Posted on 08/17/2009 4:10:54 PM PDT by Ben Mugged
Explorers have discovered a new species of giant rodent-eating carnivorous plant and have named it after legendary TV naturalist Sir David Attenborough.
Nepenthes attenboroughii, a previously unknown variety of pitcher plant discovered on a remote mountain in the Philippines, is so big that small rodents could be trapped inside and slowly dissolved by flesh-eating enzymes.
It is thought that only a few hundred of the plants exist, growing only on one mountain on the island of Palawan. The species was discovered by a team of scientists who had heard reports from missionaries who got lost in the dense jungle.
Stewart McPherson, Alastair Robinson and Volker Heinrich decided to name the plant after Sir David as an “expression of gratitude” for his decades of work celebrating the natural world.
"He has inspired a generation into protecting the world and developing greater understanding diversity of the planet,” Mr McPherson said.
Nepenthes rajah, the only species of pitcher plant bigger than N. attenboroughii, has been known to digest rodents since the British naturalist Spencer St John was astonished to discover a drowned rat in a specimen in Borneo in 1862.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Audrey II
LOL! No kidding!
Should have named it after one of our politicians
You don’t suppose Kennedy fits in one...
***Explorers have discovered a new species of giant rodent-eating carnivorous plant and have named it after legendary TV naturalist Sir David Attenborough.***
Fe-e-e-e-d me-e-e!
Barry, Barry, Here Barry! Rat on brother!
Obama likes to have plants at his town halls. how about one that eats rats? :)
Do they eat Yellow Rat democrats?
Read my mind ;-)
Are you serious?
That wouldn’t be fair to the plants. Those rats, though they are slow-moving, are much too large to be digested by them.
Sir David was a really amazing person, but I suspect I don’t know enough about him at this point, because I don’t know what prompted them to name this particular plant after him. Nevertheless, he deserves to be commemorated.
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