Carnivorous Plants

Carnivorous Plants

PIRANHA PLANT OH GOSH NOOOOOOO

Hey guys DA SCIENTIFIC WAFFLE here. Up there /\ is my "friend" the piranha plant. He's carnivorous, which means that he attracts, captures, and eats insects or other small animals. YEAH THAT'S RIGHT HE DOESN'T JUST EAT INSECTS. =O

Now we'll be talking about some of the other carnivorous plants out there, such as the bladderwort, which uses bladder traps to catch prey. Bladders? Gross! =/

A bladder trap is a trap where little closed tubes sit underwater. The tubes open when a bug gets near, sucking in the water and the bug with it. The bug then goes down the tube into the bladder, where it is digested.

Then there is the sundew. The sundew is this plant with sticky water droplets on its leaves. Get it, Sundew, dew meaning water droplets? Well, anyways, the bugs are attracted to the drops' smell and they get stuck in them. The leaf then curls up and emits digestive fluid to dissolve them. There are 100 different types of sundews, and half of them can be found in Australia. Sundews can also be found on every continent besides Antarctica.

Next up is the pitcher plant. The pitcher plant, which looks like a pitcher, like, for drinks, attracts insects with their sweet-smelling, sweet-tasting nectar. If the insect goes of the rim of the plant into it, it will fall into a pool of water at the bottom where it drowns. The bug will not be able to climb back up because of microscopic downward-facing spines the cover the inside of the plant.

There is also a type of trap called the flypaper trap, which traps bugs on its sticky leaves. The bugs decompose and the nutrients are absorbed.
Last but not least, and everyone's favorite, the VENUS FLYTRAP! =D

SNAPPA SNAPPA SNAPPA SNAPPA

The Venus flytrap snaps up prey when it lands on a mouth-like leaf. The leafs shuts, digestive fluids fill the leaf, and the little critter is dissolved. Yay!
Venus flytraps can be found in New Orleans in the United States.

Well, that's all for today.

Scientific Waffle out.

Links:
Carnivorous Plants Database

Plants and Photosynthesis

Plants and Photosynthesis

Photosynthesis - plant food! Or is it that simple? Hmm. Let's see, if the Greek word photo means light, and the Greek word synthesis means to put together, does photosynthesis mean putting together light? That doesn't sound quite right to me. How about combining light with something else? Like, I don't know, carbon dioxide and water? If you combine sunlight, carbon dioxide and water, the result is glucose. Glucose is a type of sugar, but it's also what plants eat! Photosynthesis is the process of glucose being made by chloroplasts inside plant cells.

Chloroplasts, if you didn't know already, are organelles that only exist in plants. They enable a plant to make it's own food. They also contain a green pigment called chlorophyll, which makes plants green. Chlorophyll is also the chemical that makes photosynthesis possible. Chlorophyll is contained in chloroplasts. Some plants, like the Venus fly trap, eat bugs because they cannot make enough food to support themselves.

Plants also have a cell wall, which surrounds the cell membrane. The cell wall gives the plant support and structure. They also have one large vacuole in the center instead of multiple smaller vacuoles scattered around. Now lets talk about some of the inner parts of the plant. The xylem is the part of the plant that takes the nutrients from the roots and shoots it up through the stem into the leaves. The phloem transports sap throughout the plant, which is a water based sugary fluid that helps the plant grow.

Well, that's all for today, Scientific Waffle out.

Links:
Cell Game (Plants)
  

The Six Kingdoms

The Six Kingdoms

 

Hello again and welcome to The Scientific Waffle. This time we'll be talking about the six kingdoms of life. The six kingdoms are kind of like a classification system. The system classifies all living organisms into six categories. Aristotle, a Greek philosopher, divided all living things into two categories. These two categories were animals and plants. He divided animals further by physical traits and habitat. This system was built upon until it became today's system. Over the years, scientists have learned that appearances can be misleading. In the 20th century they started to classify life by phylogeny, or how organisms are related through evolution.
 

Now let's talk about the animal kingdom. Animals, like the ones you see in pictures, outside, and sometimes in your house if you have a pet, are all multi-cellular organisms. This means they are composed of multiple cells instead of one. Animals also tend to move around, while some are sessile, meaning they do not move around. One example of a sessile animal is coral, which looks like a colored, oddly-shaped rock.

Next up is the plant kingdom. The plant kingdom is composed of multi-cellular organisms that make their own food through a process call photosynthesis. When sunlight hits the plant's leaves, it merges with the carbon dioxide that they breathe in and it makes food. This is photosynthesis. Plants also have hard cell walls instead of cell membranes.

 

After the plant kingdom is the fungi kingdom. Things like mushrooms and toadstools are fungi. Fungi don't make their own food like plants, instead they use their root-like hyphae to suck up nutrients from other organisms. They are seen many times on dead animals and plants, decomposing the carcasses.

 

Now for the bacteria kingdom. Bacteria are prokaryotic organisms, meaning they have no nucleus. Lots of people think that all bacteria are pathogenic, or they can make you sick, but in reality most bacteria are not pathogenic. Bacteria also come in many different shapes, including spheres, rods, and spirals. Some bacteria help you, like the ones in your intestines that break down food.

 

Kingdom number five is the archea kingdom. Archea are prokaryotic, just like bacteria. They are also some of the oldest life forms on earth and can survive in extreme environments. Archea were discovered in the 1970's.

 

The last kingdom is the protist kingdom. Protists are mostly single-celled microscopic organisms. Different from archea and bacteria, protists have nuclei. Some protists capture food, while some make their own food with photosynthesis. Some even do both!

 

Fun facts:

• Scientists used to think that fungi were plants, but then discovered they were drastically different.
• Protists include any microscopic life form that is not an animal, plant, bacteria or fungus.
• The six kingdoms are divided into two groups: prokaryotes and eukaryotes.

Links:
Six Kingdoms Site
Prokaryotes & Eukaryotes