The Mousetrap: Mind-blowing video of flesh-eating plant that dines on rodents and can grow 5m high (especially after a power lunch)

By TED THORNHILL

Danger: The mouse doesn't realise that it's standing on a flesh-eating plant...

It’s like the Little Shop of Horrors has come true.
There’s a carnivorous plant so large that it gobbles up mice and rats - and it even digests the teeth and bones.
Footage of a hapless mouse falling into one has been uploaded to YouTube, with over one and a half million users watching the unfortunate creature become lunch.

... until it's too late

Called Nepenthes spathulata - and part of the pitcher plant family – the deadly piece of vegetation is found on the islands of Java and Sumatra.
Nepenthes spathulata isn't quite as terrifying as the vicious human-eating plant called Audrey II from the 1986 movie Little Shop of Horrors - but is still fairly formidable.
Its stem can grow to five metres in length, with the ‘upper pitcher’ that captures animals reaching about a foot in length.
Animals are lured into its slipper-like mouth to drown or die of exhaustion before being slowly dissolved by digestive enzymes.
Recently natural history explorer Stewart McPherson, who runs Redfern Natural History Productions, discovered a new species of pitcher plant during an expedition to Mount Victoria in the Philippines, with fellow botanists Alastair Robinson and Volker Heinrich.

Blood-thirsty: Nepenthes spathulata is a flesh-eater just like Audrey II in the Little Shop of Horrors

The team said in a statement: 'That one of the largest carnivorous plants has remained undiscovered until the 21st century is remarkable.
'Many pitcher plants trap not only insects, but also rodents including mice and rats, and the new species - Nepenthes attenboroughii - is certainly large enough to catch such big prey!'
Details of the discovery, named Nepenthes attenboroughii in honour of naturalist Sir David Attenborough, were published in the Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society.
Mr McPherson, from Poole, told MailOnline: 'The victim drowns in the pitcher and acids and enzymes in the fluid within the trap break down the remains of the prey.


Hungry: The newly-discovered Nepenthes attenboroughii (left), which is named after British nature expert Sir David Attenborugh, can swallow mice like its cousin the Nepenthes northiana (right)



source: dailymail