Giant meat-eating plant discovered

A new species of a meat-eating plant has been discovered in the central Philippines.

BBC News reports that the botanists who discovered the large pitcher plant had heard reports about it from Christian missionaries who said they saw the plants on Mount Victoria in the highlands of central Palawan.

Natural history explorer Stewart McPherson and botanist Alastair Robinson scaled the mountain and confirmed that the plant was indeed a new species. They have named it Nepenthes attenboroughii after British natural history broadcaster David Attenborough. See photos of the plant .

Pitcher plants are tube-shaped leaf plants that trap their prey when insects and other small creatures fall in and become trapped.

"The plant is among the largest of all carnivorous plant species and produces spectacular traps as large as other species, which catch not only insects, but also rodents as large as rats," McPherson told the BBC.

McPherson said he hopes the high-altitude location of the pitcher plant will help prevent the plant from being poached.

The Venus fly trap is likely the best-known meat-eating plant -- it traps its prey by snapping shut when prey touch its trigger hairs. Other trapping methods used by meat-eating plants include flypaper traps, which trap prey using a sticky glue-like substance; bladder traps, in which plants are able to suck up prey through their bladders; and lobster-pot traps, which invite pray to enter their chamber and then block their exit with their inward-pointing bristles.