Man-eating Trees from Madagascar Are They Real?
3 min readAccording to legend, there is a ” man-eating tree ” that is large enough to devour humans or other large animals. Although there are various related reports and records, to date, experts have not found evidence of the specific existence of such plants.
On September 26, 1920, Dr. Carl Liche published an article in the American Weekly, describing his appalling experience in Madagascar in 1878.
He said he saw a huge flowering plant that digested a young woman of the Mkodos tribe alive. In 1925, WCBryant also announced the discovery of a cannibal tree on Mindanao, Philippines.
In 1971, South American scientists organized an expedition to Madagascar. They searched extensively in areas where edible trees were rumored, but no edible trees were found.
In 1979, the Englishman Adrienne Slack said in the book “Carnivorous Plants” that, to date, no formal records and reports of human-eating plants have been found in academia.
In 1955, German-American science writer Willy Ley pointed out in his book Salamanders and other Wonders that the cannibal tree was fabricated.
At present, there are more than 600 carnivorous plants in 13 families, 20 genera, and most of them belong to the three carnivorous families, such as Nepenthes, Droseraceae, and Utricularia. The largest known carnivorous plant is Nepenthes Malayam, which preys on small mammals.
Nepenthes Rajah, also known as Nepenthes Rajah, Nepenthes Rajah, and Nepenthes Nepenthes, is a tropical carnivorous plant endemic to Mount Tambu and Kuna, Sabah, Malaysia. Nepenthes Malayum is an alpine or sub-alpine plant. Due to its limited distribution, it has been assessed as an endangered species by the World Conservation Union.
Nepenthes Malayum is famous for its giant cricket-shaped pitcher. Its pitcher can be up to 41 cm wide, up to 20 cm wide, and has a volume of up to 3.5 liters. The digestive juice can reach 2.5 liters, which is the species with the largest pitcher capacity in the genus Nepenthes.
The main prey of Nepenthes Malayum is ants and other insects, but its pitcher occasionally catches small vertebrates such as mice, frogs, lizards, and birds.
In movies and novels, a kind of man-eating tree called ” Miaobai ” is often mentioned. In fact, it is a fictional plant that does not exist in reality.
So far, no official records or reports of human-eating plants have been found in the academic world, and even the famous botanical masterpieces “Plant Nature” and “The Dictionary of Flowering Plants and Ferns” do not contain any information on human eating. The description of the tree. Most botanists believe that no human-eating plant exists in the world today.
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