Pitcher plants are even more carnivorous than we imagined, regularly feasting on salamanders, a new study shows for the first time.

Vertebrates, ranging from frogs to rats, have been seen in the sticky jaws of pitcher plants before, but were “thought to be a rare prey trapped accidentally,” says Kazuki Tagawa, an ecologist from Tottori College in Kurayoshi, Japan, who wasn’t involved in the research.

That’s why Tagawa was so surprised by the discovery, published recently in the journal Ecology.

Study leader Patrick Moldowan, an ecologist at the University of Toronto in Ontario, Canada, was making his rounds of a bog in Algonquin Provincial Park in August 2018 when he spotted the bizarre behavior. (Read more