Even when I trap flies in a plastic CUP and put them OVER the flytrap, so that the fly is virtually guaranteed to land on the traps sooner or later, the Venus flytrap will trigger in such a way that the fly escapes the closing pod and isn’t caught.
How do these things make a living in the wild?
They don’t live in your house
They only exist in a very narrow specific microclimate, and feed on a variety of insects (not just flies).
When a mosquito lands on my arm, if I try to slap it immediately, it’s too quick and flies away. I have to let the mosquito settle itself and just start to get a-bitin’, then I slap the little basterd to death while it’s occupied.
I suspect your fly and the flytrap is a similar situation. I think flytraps give off an odor that attracts certain insects, so they land in there and are all distracted thinking they’re going to find some food, giving the flytrap time to catch it. But when you try to insert the fly in there, or drop it out of a cup or whatever, it’s freaked out and just trying to get away from the madness as quickly as it can.
The hairs need to be stimulated more than once to cause a trap closure.
Try giving it two test tickles.
Also,
Won’t that turn it into a Vulcan flytrap?
The real question is whether your Johnny Fever does anything other than play old Pink Floyd albums.
Obviously in the wild they learn from their parents, just like lion cubs. By breeding them in captivity they are robbed of this opportunity.
I’m thinking of the tyrannosaurus in Jurassic Park who refused to eat the captive goat because that didn’t count as hunting.
Paging @carnivorousplant
We had one and it caught insects, including a fly once.
The real issue is they are very light eaters - eating one fly every few weeks isn’t really going to make a dent of the number of flies around the place.
When I was a kid, my brother had one that he fed tuna fish. I don’t recall that it ever caught anything on its own.
That is the answer.
Feeding tuna fish or hamburger will probably destroy the trap. Each trap can only work a few times before it dies. VFTs are grown in nurseries by the thousands without eating.
As for the flies, get a Bug-a-salt. It’s the cat’s pajamas!
I have a dead housefly now, and I think I’m going to feed it to the flytrap by putting it in the trap, then using a toothpick or something to prick the inside of the trap into thinking the bug is alive, 5-7 times.
Wait, what? These things only eat a few times in their lifespan? Is their lifespan that short, or is carnivory just not that important to their sustenance?
As mentioned, an indoor Venus flytrap doesn’t need extraneous sources of meat to survive. Placing a dead fly in a trap and triggering it every once in awhile may be entertaining, though less so than watching a filthy insect alight on the trap and get caught. There are more satisfying carnivorous plants to raise, however.
The trap in this case meaning the individual leaf that forms the trap, not the whole plant.
They grow new traps.