Check out this video of frog vs Venus flytrap …
Although your Venus flytrap is able to catch small frogs, lizards, worms and any other bizarre animals you may choose to feed it, you shouldn’t! There are too many nasty nutrients in these animals than your plant can handle. You plant should only feed on bugs, bugs and more bugs.And here for your viewing pleasure is some footage of the type of animal your Venus flytrap should be feeding on …
Firstly, Venus flytraps are carnivorous. However, this does not mean that they can eat any old thing you decide to stick in it. You can not feed it any of the following:
Venus flytraps have evolved to consume only bugs. They’re very picky and if you feed them anything else they won’t like it. The best bugs to use are soft squishy bugs without super strong exoskeletons (too hard to digest). Ants and slaters are bad due to their hard exoskeletons and moths are too fuzzy to digest. Some of the best bugs to use are:
It is crucial that you don’t feed your plant anything bigger than about 1/4 the size of the leaf, any bigger and you risk damaging the plant or the plant rejecting the bug. If you’re careful you can go up to about 1/2 the size of the leaf but be careful.
Maggots are good food too, but that’s a topic for another post.
Overfeeding your plant with bugs which are too big to completely fit in it’s traps will definitely harm it. However feeding your plant lots of tiny bugs on a regular basis is usually not going to kill it.
In general you shouldn’t force feed your plants more than once a week. Of course if your plant is outside or you have lots of bugs in your house then it may catch significantly more than this of it’s own accord. This isn’t a big drama though, the worst that will happen is that your traps will die, turn black and then regrow again. Some growers have reported that over feeding leads to smaller weaker traps due to rapid regrowth.
Photo courtesy of Canon Fodder.