Aldovanda,
aquatic bladderwort,
bladder,
carnivorous plants,
Dionaea,
foresight,
Genlisea,
Granville Sewell,
Intelligent Design,
Irreducible Complexity,
John Innes Centre,
Life Sciences,
Marcos Eberlin,
Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research,
mousetrap,
The Evolution of Carnivorous Plants,
Utricularia,
Venus flytrap,
Wolf-Ekkehard Lönnig
I won’t pretend to you that this isn’t a stressful time. In search of distraction, today I’ve been thinking about a rather odd water dweller. It’s the carnivorous plant Utricularia, aka aquatic bladderwort. Granville Sewell wrote about it here recently, citing plant geneticist Wolf-Ekkehard Lönnig and others, calling it “Michael Behe’s ‘Irreducibly Complex’ Mousetrap in Nature.” Its mechanism is not just complex, but irreducibly so. Like a mousetrap, it requires purpose in its design. Check out these videos: The video from the John Innes Centre in the U.K. concludes, “Plants are seriously smart.” I can’t tell if that’s supposed to be ironic, but the mechanism is indeed ingenious. If your German skills are up for it, you can read Dr. Lönnig’s book on The Evolution of Carnivorous Plants, downloadable here,…