Paragraph on “Why do some plants eat animals?” complete paragraph for Class 9, Class 10, Class 11 and Class 12

Why do some plants eat animals?

All green plants, that is, those that make their own food by photosynthesis, also have a need for certain chemicals. These chemicals are called nutrients, and plants usually obtain them from the soil. The nutrients pass into the roots, and from there they are carried to the various parts of the plant. One of the most important nutrients is nitrogen, which is turned into nitrates by tiny creatures, called bacteria, which live in the soil. Some soils, however, are not suitable for these bacteria to live in. Sometimes the soil is too acid, and usually it is very boggy and waterlogged. If the bacteria cannot live in the soil, then there will be no available nitrates for the plant.

Without nitrogen, plants soon become very unhealthy. Their leaves turn yellow and fade, they cannot perform photosynthesis properly and they grow much more poorly than they would if they had all the nitrogen they needed. So you might think that plants would not grow in soils where nitrogen is scarce, however there are some plants that have overcome the problem of how to get nitrogen. Animals have plenty of nitrogen in their bodies, so these plants eat animals! The animals that they eat are only small, of course, and are mainly insects like flies. Plants that eat animals are called insectivorous plants, and they go about catching their insect ‘food’ in a variety of ingenious ways.