Death By Waterslide For Carnivorous Plant's Prey [Video]

When I think about plants, "hairy" is not the first word that comes to mind. But it turns out that most plants do grow lots of little hairs--technically called "trichomes" and also, technically, more like cilia than hair--and those hairs are usually water-repellant, causing raindrops to bead up on the plant's leaves like water on a windshield.

But scientists have discovered that the hairs on Heliamphora nutans, a species of carnivorous pitcher plants, have the opposite function: they are supremely wettable, causing water droplets to spread and turning the surface of the funnel-shaped plant into an inescapably slippery trap:

And here's one more quick clip showing how water spreads over the plant's surface:

Other carnivorous plants have specialized hairs that stick to prey, trigger trap movements, and absorb nutrients, but Heliamphora nutans is the first plant known to have developed the death-by-waterslide trap.