Venus Flytraps & Morality

Photo by Izabella Bedő (Pexels)

Not so recently ago, I got a Venus flytrap and I believe that I have already mentioned it in my other article about the reason I don’t want children so I am going to skip over the thoughts I had about getting a plant but rather talk about the flytrap itself.

For anyone who is unaware, I name my Venus flytrap Dionne because I can and I will be referencing the flytrap with that name from here on out. You have been informed. Warning: This article is not for the squeamish or faint-hearted.

As the name suggests, Dionne traps flies. It is actually quite interesting to find out more about Dionne and carnivorous plants in general. Personally, I find how they came to be the way they are and how they “eat” the most interesting.

That is one of the many reasons I wanted to get Dionne in the first place. I wanted to see this survival instinct and digestion process in action first hand and sadly, videos were, simply put, not enough. It is exciting to see videos of flytraps trapping a fly but I can´t say it does the real thing justice.

Of course, I did not only get Dionne to see everything live but I also just wanted to fulfil a cliché while I am at it. The cliché being that students always have a plant in their dorm rooms. I do not know how much that idea holds water in real life but from what I have heard it just seems like a cliché.

The plant itself is anything but a cliché since I seem to be the first one I know experimental enough to get one of the carnivorous plants in my immediate circle. However, the notion of having a plant especially in a dorm room just seems like a cliché at this point. Nevertheless, this is beside the point.

As I was writing, carnivorous plants are interesting and I wanted to find out how they work. However, after doing a little bit of research, I found out that they don’t necessarily need to consume insects every day. They don’t even need to consume anything every week as a matter of fact.

You have no idea how disappointed I was when I found out that tiny trivial detail about Dionne and her species. It is a survival mechanism but they have adapted themselves so well to their environment that they don’t need that much of the nutrients the insects provide in the first place.

The bright side to that disappointment was that they still could consume the insects should they fall into the traps so it is not a total loss after all. Nevertheless, I don’t believe I can emphasize my shock and disappointment enough since that piece of information was devastating.

The reason for the disappointment being that I always considered Dionne´s species the closest thing a plant could be to a pet I never had. Not being able to feed it just seems like a letdown. However, a letdown I got over quickly after I learnt more about how Dionne works and interesting facts about carnivorous plants.

After a week or two of taking care of Dionne, I let my curiosity get the better of me. In the span of two weeks, I have never experienced how Dionne would catch its prey and some part of even started to doubt Dionne´s ability to devour insects.

However, the fact that I never saw Dionne catch prey is simply because there is no prey around for Dionne to catch. The small insects are just too small to trip the trigger hairs in the traps causing the closing of the traps. Which just means the insects have to be bigger.

Nevertheless, the bigger insects never seem to land in their traps much less trigger them shut. As for the flies they were supposed to catch, I just believe they are excessively fast for Dionne to catch. Guiltily, I will also admit that I accidentally set off a few traps once and let´s just say the rate at which they close might be excessively slow in comparison.

The reason I feel guilty for setting off the traps is simply that it takes a lot of energy to close a trap. According to researchers who found that overstimulating the plant would cause it to stop responding to touch, which is unwanted, to say the least, so I try to be very careful when taking care of Dionne.

Moreover, I am just concerned since the flies are huge. I never saw a side-by-side comparison between the size of the trap and the fly but I just believe that it is a tad too big for the already large traps. Straightforwardly, Dionne´s traps should not be digesting anything larger than themselves.

The reason behind it being that too large prey won´t allow the trap to seal fully hence, digestion would not be able to begin. This slight glitch in the system will just cause the trap to rot. Frankly, I am no willing to go on a plant leaf-killing spree this early on my taking-care-of-a-plant journey.

Fun fact: Once the trap closes the digestion process does not start immediately since it could just be debris. The trigger hairs inside would need to be triggered after the closing to start digestion. Insects are likely to be alive and crawling around in the trap, which would simply lead to their demise.

Interesting facts aside, I believe by simply owning Dionne and learning all about her made me understand evolution and adaptation even better since I tend to understand more if there are real-life examples as a stand-in for rather complex ideas and processes.

One day, I managed to catch a spider alive since I have done that multiple times before without harming the insect. On a normal day, I would capture it and set it free. By free I mean anywhere besides my room. The spider, however, was boldly walking all over my laptop and an idea just came to me.

That day I decided on two things. One: put Dionne to the test to see if she can truly digest a spider. Two: let the spider decide its own fate through a Roman Gladiator style showdown. I let the spider crawl all over Dionne and see if it can set off any traps.

It was entertaining to watch the spider go through the unknown yet deadly terrain and meet an inevitable death. Frankly, the death part did not happen as I hoped it would. My hypothesis is that the spider legs were too thin and light to set off any traps.

Not only was the spider still alive after half an hour of crawling around but it left its webs everywhere. The thin spider silk traced where the spider crawled. Removing the spider silk was a challenge not only was it nearly invisible but they were also in the traps and hard to remove without setting off a trap.

After half an hour, my moral compass was severely overshadowed by my curiosity and my frustrations. The spider made a huge mess and was still walking. That is when I decided that the spider was a dead spider walking. I had enough of it and took the decision of the spider´s fate out of the spider´s hands (or legs).

When the spider was a bit exhausted after all the walking, it was, luckily for my annoyance, resting in a trap. I just did the thing I would normally never do and deliberately set off a trap. Inadvertently trapping the spider in the cage created by Dionne´s teeth.

As expected, the spider did struggle in the trap but just to be sure, the trap does not open the next day with the spider fully intact, I triggered the hairs inside to start the digestion process. Moments later, the trap is completely sealed shut to indicate the starting of the digestion process.

There was not too much to see after the closing of the trap. Dionne´s digestion process is not visible to the human eye. Unlike the trapping of the insect when one still can see the insect inside, the digestion prevents anyone from seeing anything.

After roughly a week, the trap finally opened. Inside the trap was only the exoskeleton of the spider. Now there is only the trouble of removing the exoskeleton without setting off the trap. But enough about Dionne even though I can go on for days.

The most important lesson I learnt from feeding Dionne was to never let a spider anywhere near Dionne ever again but that is far from the most insightful difficulty I have faced. The other problem I ran into was after I set off the trap, which contained the spider.

My mother made me aware of that dilemma I have caused because she was the one who pointed out that I killed a spider that day. This time I would not even argue with her because I know I did even though only Dionne´s hands (or traps) got dirty.

In all honesty, I was never the most morally pure person... far from it because I can be a bit unfeeling when it comes to the life of small insects. I am just glad that the emotionlessness does not apply to other aspects of my life.

This time, however, I would not say the indifference was completely gone but my mother´s statement just got me thinking about it. There was a twinge of guilt maybe but that was it. A comparison would be like the ripping of a band-aid. It may briefly hurt but then it is all forgotten about.

It was insignificant to me if that spider lived or not. My mother would even whole-heartedly agree that she could not care less about the life of a spider. The spider is a dime in a dozen if you will. However, my mother was upset about the fact that I delivered the killing blow.

To me, it didn’t matter that much if I killed the spider or if the spider would be killed by a pigeon later. Now it is dead and there is not much I can do about it. Therefore, I could not understand my mother´s discontent.

For a while, I have been wondering about it and frankly, I would even admit that I didn’t get far. Neither one of us cared about the wellbeing of the spider when it lived but suddenly my mother cares when it is dead because of me. It was just illogical and I could not comprehend.

We don´t care about the spider if we would accidentally kill it. We don´t care when it is alive. We don´t normally even know if the spider is dead. Nevertheless, if we were the ones who intentionally killed it, it makes us the guilty ones. I know I am not on the moral high ground here but that is just irrational.

When I served up that spider on a silver platter to Dionne, I am a bad person in many people´s eyes. I would even disagree with that label since I was only curious. However, I do know that that curiosity is the downfall of many movie villains.

This just got me wondering about what that spider meant and its value since I could not care less about it when it was alive and I would not have known if it were dead if I had not killed it. Therefore, my question would be why people are upset since most do not care about every single spider.

When I served up that spider on a silver platter to Dionne, I am a bad person in many people´s eyes. I would even disagree with that label since I was only curious and I did not necessarily wanted to kill anything. However, I do know that curiosity is the downfall of many movie villains.

Normally, people would not even acknowledge the existence of insects and who knows how many we have stepped on today. Whether we like it or not, we are killing insects’ every day but most of us do not know, do not feel guilt and are not considered bad people.

However, when we intentionally kill insects we are the evildoer even though it was just one. In comparison to the dozen, we kill unintentionally every day, one barely seems like anything. I just don’t grasp why that one spider mattered more than all the others.

It boils down to intent, I guess. Whether we are deciding to do it or accidentally doing it. It is the idea that counts and my idea was impure. That one spider gets elevated in importance because of intention. How is that fair to the rest of the spiders who died in terrible accidents every day?

If we care about every single spider, ant and bug, like the one spider I killed, then we will be spending a lot of time and effort making sure we never step on one ever again and that is quite the feat. Not saying that insects are not important since they do fulfil their duty but prioritization is important as well. It is about striking a balance between insect love and the time in your life.

After all this pondering, I don’t necessarily feel guilt or regret for my actions. It is the circle of life. Some are lucky and some are not. Some are better adapted and some are not. Some are just at the wrong place at the wrong time and some are not.

At the end of the day, the death of one spider should be considered equal to the many spiders who met similar ends. Just because I played the judge, jury and executioner, it should not make that spider more important than its peers.

As for my evil doing. The intent is what separates the good from the bad. There is a moral line in the ground, a blurry line at best but it is there. Honestly, I don’t believe I have crossed that line since it was only one spider. I saw the trapping and digestion once and will never do it again because it is bad for Dionne.

So maybe next time before accusing a person of insect assassination, do consider how your moral values align with theirs and find a middle ground perhaps. Think about intention, the other side of the story and the recidivism rate. Try being more open-minded.