Breaking News English

New research light on how carnivorous plants like the Venus fly trap a taste for meat. A study from the University of Würzburg in Germany that subtle changes in the genetics of plants to some becoming carnivorous. These changes led to the development of some of nature's most ingenious species. Carnivorous plants novel and devious ways to and snare insects. The Venus fly trap uses clam-like leaves that shut when an insect crawls between them. The pitcher plant shaped like a vase - insects go inside and then cannot up the slippery insides. The sundew plant has long sticky leaves, which up after insects get stuck on them.

Researchers in a variety of fields in the study. They computational evolutionary biologist Jörg Schultz and plant biologist Rainer Hedrich. They and compared the genomes of carnivorous plants to non-carnivorous plants. They that meat-eating plants developed from the same common ancestor about 60 million years ago. Dr Schultz said: "We were able to the origin of carnivorous genes back to a duplication event that many millions of years ago in the genome of the last common ancestor of the carnivorous species." Dr Rainer : "The function of these genes related to the ability to and digest animals and to their nutrients."