Last week a new species of Pitcher plant was ‘formally announced’ to the public. It’s called Nepenthes attenboroughii, named after David Attenborough the host of many BBC nature shows. The plant was discovered on Mount Victoria on the island of Palawan in the Philippines. The interesting thing about it is it is said to produce a chemical on the rim of the pitcher that will attract rats and mice to it. Once the rodents are drawn in and try to drink, they fall in, drown, and are dissolved by enzymes the plant secretes. Continue reading to find out what’s really going on.
Is that true though, or did some publications decide to twist the findings for their own means? One of the lead scientists on the project, Alastair S. Robinson, has expressed disappointment over the medias coverage of this finding and how it has been skewed to be more interesting to the masses. According to him the plants don’t actually feed on rats at all, when studying it he and his team only found insects in the pitcher.
Why is science writing sometimes so fictional? Science is a subject that is supposed to be based on experimenting and reporting on facts.
Don’t even get me started on the idea to call bio-luminescent globes released by deep-sea worms ‘bombs’, apparently it was the author’s idea in this one though.
