Sinister bird-catching tree found that traps and kills birds

We already are aware about carnivorous plants such as the Venus flytrap that eats insects, but now another kind of tree has been found that kills birds without any specific reason.

Dubbed as the bird-catching trees, the two species of ‘Pisonia’ trees in Puerto Rico have a unique way to kill the birds landing on it. Through its sticky fruits, the tree weighs the birds down, preventing them from flying away. The long seeds are covered with thick mucus and small hooks that stick on to anything that brushes against them, such as insects or birds.

“Birds are the main dispersal agents for Pisonia trees, carrying the sticky fruits glued to their feathers to distant islands. However, sometimes these fruits can trap too tightly and even kill birds. So far, we do not know of cases where birds have been trapped by the sticky fruits of the new species, but future studies will explore this possibility,” said the lead author Caraballo-Ortiz.

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According to IFLScience, when the fruit falls to the ground, the sticky liquid attracts the creatures and gets stuck on them. Because the birds can no longer fly, they die of starvation and rot on the tree’s basement, which in turn acts as the tree’s nourishment, as the scientists predict the reason for this killing to be. After attacking the birds that land on the trees, there are also times when they do not even make it to the ground and are left hanging from the branches.

As per Phys.org, publishing the research in the journal Phytokeys, one of the researchers Trejo-Torres said, “Finding large organisms new to science from a relatively small and well-studied island seems implausible, but this recent naming of the two large trees from Puerto Rico proves that explorations in nature and museums can still produce exciting novelties.”