1986 VHS • PBS Nature Documentary: Death Trap 60 FPS

About

Death Trap is a 1986 PBS Nature documentary examining the world's carnivorous plants, tracing the evolutionary origins of plant predation on insects and the wide variety of trap mechanisms that have evolved independently across the plant kingdom. The program opens at Rancho La Brea, where a paleontologist notes that the eohippus, the dawn horse, was the size of a small dog when it lived alongside plants capable of trapping insects, and uses the asphalt pit as a metaphor for the documentary's subject. The main argument is that carnivorous plants evolved their feeding strategies in nutrient-poor soils where nitrogen and phosphorus are unavailable through normal root absorption, making the digestion of insect prey a competitive adaptation.

The program covers the Venus flytrap in detail, explaining its hair trigger mechanism, the two-touch requirement to prevent wasted closures on raindrops and debris, the speed of the trap relative to a fly's reaction time, and the digestive process inside the closed trap. The sundew is covered as a slower and more widely distributed trap, operating through adhesive glands on tentacles that move to engulf prey. The aquatic bladderwort is shown capturing water fleas and other invertebrates in trapdoors that operate in a thousandth of a second and reset within 15 to 30 minutes. The program also covers pitcher plants of North America, the giant Nepenthes pitchers of Southeast Asia and Borneo which can trap frogs and small animals, and the lobster-pot design of Genlisea. Bromeliads are shown as independently evolved trap systems. The film documents unusual inhabitants of pitchers including a mosquito larva, a mite, and a small spider that lives inside the pitcher of the Nepenthes without being digested. The tape runs approximately 59 minutes, including a PBS Home Video promo at the opening.

Human-made No record of this work says a model made it. What this means.

Archive

Internet Archive, in The VHS Vault

Licence or status

The Internet Archive states none for this item.

Credit

The Vista Group®

Language

English

Subtitles

English (automatic)

Who can watch

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