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Rapid Prey Slinging Sundews It always looks sensational when the rapid catapults of some sundews fling their prey into the sticky tentacles of the trapping leaf in a matter of seconds or even milliseconds. The largest of the catapult-flypaper traps known to date, Drosera glanduligera, is even faster than the famous Venus flytrap. In the past, who would have thought a sundew could do that? The exciting research into these fast trapping movements in the genus Drosera only began in the 1980s with the still rather sedate Drosera burmannii / D. sessilifolia. We show with impressive recordings how research into the fast catapults progressed. Even today there are still surprises. In this film we show all known rapid catapult-flypaper traps and present video evidence of the tentacle movement of Drosera australis, a further rapid pygmy Drosera.

Amazing results: Pygmy sundews capture minute prey like springtails with rapid catapult action. Our experiments for this film (English subtitles) show that Drosera glanduligera is not longer the only sundew with a catapult-flypaper trapping mechanism. Also the snap-tentacles of several pygmy Drosera act with the speed of a closing Venus flytrap and fling walking prey from the periphery of the plant onto its sticky leaf. Therefore they turn out to be actually comparable with the amazing Drosera glanduligera, however, their catapults are multifunctional and possess a mechanism to avoid unessential movement: Like Venus's Flytrap. Under our microscope we examined 22 Drosera and received surprising results. Furthermore we were able to film many pygmy Drosera in situ on field trips with Allen Lowrie, Greg Bourke and Kirstie Wulf (1991 & 2001), providing these shots now for the first time on YouTube. We are happy to introduce Gideon Lim from Malaysia, who showed the first video of the rapid snap-tentacles of D. pygmaea "New Zealand, all green" on the internet even in 2014. In addition, we recommend a visit at "Andy Landgraf Makrofotografie" on Flickr and on Facebook. Andy kindly provided some of his impressive macro-shots for our film, to feature some more minute prey and predators in "Pygmyland".