Eli5:how and why some plants have become carnivorous? And do those plants still require water and sun or is meat the only source of growth for them?

Question

Eli5:how and why some plants have become carnivorous? And do those plants still require water and sun or is meat the only source of growth for them?

In: Biology

Answer 1

Carniverous plants dont “eat” animals so much as “compost” them. They dont eat meat for energy, they disolve them for the nitrogen they are made of, making a fertilizer. the energy containing bits are just in the plants way and get wasted.

they do this because they live in a low nitrogen environment.

as for how they evolved, without intermediate species, we can only guess. pressumably some plants started by entraping insects by accident, and just started getting better at it.