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Post by shartmeyer on Apr 4, 2007 10:28:47 GMT
Last week at our greenhouse our N. truncata caught an adult mouse. Here is a photo:
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Post by rsivertsen on Apr 4, 2007 14:52:43 GMT
Beautiful! I have witnessed large N. ventricosa "porcelain clone" with 10 inch pitchers also trap a field mouse!
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Post by Michael Catalani on Apr 4, 2007 16:46:35 GMT
Nice catch by the plant. Clearly it did not appreciate the gift the mouse left on its leaves. My larger Nepenthes routinely caught mice in the winter time. Mice could cause some problems within my greenhouse during the winter. If there was ice or snow cover outside, they would be hard pressed to find food. They would make their way into the greenhouse and chew off some smaller pitchers to consume the prey that was caught by the pitchers. N. truncatas caught quite a few of these mice, probably because they were sturdy enough plants for the mice to climb on and get caught. They are certainly large enough.
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Glenn
Full Member
Posts: 4
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Post by Glenn on Apr 5, 2007 16:21:10 GMT
I grow my Neps in the basement and mice chew my pitchers up to get a taste of the nectar. I wish a few would fall into the pitchers on my plants!
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Post by nepenthes on Apr 9, 2007 2:41:11 GMT
A dream come true!
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Post by shartmeyer on Apr 18, 2007 7:42:40 GMT
Thank you for your postings. During the last days I received a nice feedback to our pictures and beside our domestic newspaper even the Indonesian journal "TRUBUS" was interested to print them. Unexpected to me were the number of emails containing reports of caught mice in diverse greenhouses in the USA, UK, Sri Lanka, France and Germany. When I posted the story I thought mice are caught only accidentally but meanwhile it seems to me that bigger Nepenthes traps are really made to catch bigger animals and thus small rodents are obviously within the spectrum of targeted prey.
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Post by rsivertsen on Apr 18, 2007 13:16:05 GMT
I recall reading early accounts of N. rajah having skeletal remains of mice, rats, and other small vertebrates in their larger pitchers.
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Post by Michael Catalani on Apr 18, 2007 16:08:24 GMT
When I posted the story I thought mice are caught only accidentally but meanwhile it seems to me that bigger Nepenthes traps are really made to catch bigger animals and thus small rodents are obviously within the spectrum of targeted prey. Whats kind of funny is that my large Nepenthes truncatas loved ants. I had cut off an old pitcher and dumped the contents out, and it was like a giant mound of sawdust. Millions of them. So while it could feast on large animals, it was filling up on the smallest of prey.
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Post by rsivertsen on Apr 18, 2007 16:19:10 GMT
I agree, and for the most part, Nepenthes seem to feed mostly on ants; almost every species and hybrid I have. N. bicalcurata is in fact an "ant plant" having a hollow pit in the tendril just before the pitcher, in which ants drill in and make a home. Many Nepenthes secrete nectar on the leaves and tendrils and lure the ants into their pitchers.
When I grew a few of them outdoors, almost all of the pitchers became full of ants to the point where many began to rot if they didn’t have enough liquid in the pitchers. I made it a point to keep water in the pitchers, and filled up the pitchers about twice a week.
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Post by mannyherrera on Apr 25, 2007 17:35:48 GMT
Unglaublich!
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Post by shartmeyer on May 14, 2007 14:04:38 GMT
Meanwhile the Truncata developed the next pitcher. Obviously the plant took its benefit from those five days of "mouse-extraction". The new trap is 36 cm, even eight cm larger than the mouse-trap before .
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Post by shartmeyer on May 31, 2007 8:45:12 GMT
Here is a picture of the new trap: And the story goes on because end of last week our "killer truncata" caught a second mouse within six weeks.
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Mikei
Full Member
Posts: 12
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Post by Mikei on Jun 21, 2007 17:36:20 GMT
i bet ya i you left it in there it would of smelled horible Mikei
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Post by shartmeyer on May 19, 2008 12:14:54 GMT
It sounds unbelievable, but our "killertruncata" caught last week the third mouse in our greenhouse. To complete this thread here are the photos of mouse 2 and 3: This time we will document the digestion to its end, as we have meanwhile hermetical sealed doors between greenhouse and house .
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Post by wasted on May 19, 2008 15:56:43 GMT
LOL
Again!
This plants getting a taste for mouse flesh!
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