[_tom_]

You are assuming that they haven't.

Brambles can trap sheep, benefiting from the sheep as fertilizer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrGobnZq83g

Falling coconuts can not only kill people, but probably kill far more small animals, again benefiting from them as fertilizer,

[ethbr1]

Came to HN for tech news, left with a disturbing realization that coconut trees might be low-key carnivorous.

[__MatrixMan__]

If it's a fun kind of disturbing, and you like SciFi, you might enjoy Semiosis.

[username135]

Right?!

[yesbabyyes]

I've visited Lady Musgrave Island in the Great Barrier Reef. It is covered with trees called "the grand devil's-claws", the seeds of which are barbed and sticky. The seeds stick to the wings of birds eating seeds, and so they can spread across islands.

However, a visitor to the island will soon notice lots of dead birds on the ground. There are no predators or scavengers, so the birds lay there decomposing.

Thus, the trees use the birds not only for reproduction, but also for food. It's a carnivorous forest out there on the reef.

[doesnt_know]

Going down that line of thought... Cocunuts naturally selected for harder shells because those killed, creating more fertilizer ...

[kragen]

Coconut husks are fairly soft. About like a pumpkin. They're only dangerous because they're so large and heavy.

[trgn]

Dont they clank!

[Affric]

If plants moved faster we would be absolutely terrified of them.

[signalToNose]

The Day of the Triffids

[loa_in_]

Attack of the killer Tomatoes!

[bregma]

He means fruits.

[rcarmo]

Came here for this comment.

[athenot]

Let's not be too hasty...

[pauldraper]

The kill rate of coconuts cannot be high.

[zimpenfish]

[0] lists 28 documented cases - if we ignore the 5 before 1943 (probably not reliable records), that gives 23 in just over 80 years or roughly one every 3.5 years (although you'd expect that to have increased over time as more people live or tourist near the trees)

Of those 23, 5 were infants (<3y), 1 was killed by 4 coconuts, 1 was killed by a bunch of 57 coconuts(!), and 2 were accidentally killed by their harvesting monkeys.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_by_coconut

[nottorp]

> 1 was killed by a bunch of 57 coconuts(!)

I'll raise you this:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-66429342

[HelloNurse]

Killing an animal on their way to the beach is a free bonus for coconuts: they necessarily drop from the top of the tree and they need a high quality shell in any case for their primary job of floating on water and dispersing.

[dyauspitr]

I was in south India for about a month and I heard of 1 person dying from a coconut during that time period and heard it wasn’t unheard of. Not a lot of people die but plenty of folks get injured.

[imoreno]

Wouldn't animal scavengers pick the carcass clean long before it rots?

[kragen]

That still counts if the scavengers poop nearby.

[imoreno]

Usually, animals move around while digesting. They don't just eat the food, immediately digest it, and poop on the spot like a cartoon.

[hinkley]

Maybe poisonous plants aren’t always protecting themselves.

“None of you seem to understand. I’m not locked in here with you. You’re locked in here with me!”

[gbraad]

The size of insects has decreased over time, correlating with a drop in atmospheric oxygen levels. Maybe this has also happened to carnivorous plants?

[moate]

As the article points out: If conditions exist for "high-quality plant growth" (correct light, soil, moisture, etc) then plants don't make weird adaptations like eating things/water-conservation methods.

However, if those conditions DON'T exist, then it's hard for plants to get very big.

There's also this: the larger a moving creature you're trying to capture, the more resources you need to invest in the trap. Bladderwort exists everywhere because it's easy to trap small/microscopic things. Giant bear-eating plants exist nowhere because consistently trapping a bear with just leaves, sap, and stems is really fucking hard.

At a certain point, the plants reach an equilibrium where the effort is worth the end result, but diminishing returns if they got larger.

[ahartmetz]

One can imagine some pretty twisted stuff, but anyway large mammals tend to have enough brains to learn to recognize dangers without, or failing that, with evolution (think innate fear of snakes).

[HelloNurse]

Consider plausible interactions, like cow vs. sundew. The sundew's only hope for survival is looking inedible and repelling the cow, capturing the cow is completely out of the question.

[knowitnone]

this is a secondary mechanism. Falling branches kill and therefor get fertilizer.

[lambdasquirrel]

If you want to speculate about that, then how about the bamboo die-off cycle? Imagine if you lived in the PNW or Appalachia, and every 120 years the entire side of a mountain launched an army of hungry rats at you. Starves all those cute smug “panda” gluttons too.