The Plant That Eats Animals

There are life-and-death battles in the microscopic world between tiny shelled animals and flesh-devouring fungi. The phenomenon can be compared to that of a tree catching and eating big turtles.

When a culture of diseased plant roots is made, there soon appear great numbers of microscopic plants and animals—bacteria, fungi, amoebae, nematodes and other life forms. Immediately the struggle for survival starts. The animals try to eat the plants and the plants attempt to devour the animals.

Among the animal forms which appear are vast numbers of creatures known as rhizopods. Practically unknown except to specialists, these microscopic creatures play an important part in the economy of life. They are probably the best-equipped of all the new arrivals to survive, since their soft bodies are covered with relatively heavy shells.

Some years ago Dr. Charles Dreschler of the U.S. Department of Agriculture reported the existence of predaceous meat-eating fungi—parasitic forms of plant life—which literally lassoed such unprotected animals as amoebae and thread-like nematodes and proceeded to devour them at leisure by the process of infiltrating their bodies. It would appear that the armored rhizopods are completely protected from these ferocious plants.

But the animal has one weak spot in its defense. It must get its mouth outside its shell in order to eat. Apparently the most inviting forage at hand is the innocent-appearing fungus. The rhizopod proceeds to suck at it with movements which Dr. Dreschler describes as similar to “sucking an egg.”

The rhizopod mouth is small. Once it has sucked in any of the fungus its fate is sealed, for, explains Dr. Dreschler, “to such undiscriminating voracity the fungus responds by rapidly proliferating from the partly ingested portion a bulbous outgrowth slightly larger than the mouth, so that the rhizopod is held securely.”

The unfortunate shelled animal is like a fish caught on a hook. It struggles vainly to get away. It rushes, but the fungus simply lets out the line until the rhizopod is brought to an abrupt stop and can be hauled in. The line is a filament connecting the body of the fungus with the bulb in the animal’s mouth.

Once its prey is secure, the fungus proceeds to send out growths from the bulb through the creature’s flesh, literally eating it alive. Very rarely, like a hooked fish, a rhizopod is able to break away.

In the course of its life, a single one of these thread-like fungi will capture many of the shelled animals, lining them up securely mouth-to-mouth on both sides of itself. It absorbs their substance at its leisure. Other predaceous fungi have definite external organs for capturing their prey. This particular species, however, has no external appendages and appears completely inert and innocent until it is stimulated to action by the sucking of the rhizopod.