I Never Fully Trusted Tomatoes

I love tomatoes. But I've never really trusted them since I discovered (in the fourth grade) that they're members of the deadly nightshade family. Now, new scientific research has uncovered another terrifying truth about everyone's favorite salad ingredient.

TOMATOES ARE CARNIVOROUS!

That's right. Tomatoes eat insects. How? According to an article in The Telegraph . . .

Botanists have discovered for the first time that [tomatoes] are carnivorous predators who kill insects in order to "self-fertilise" themselves.

New research shows that they capture and kill small insects with sticky hairs on their stems and then absorb nutrients through their roots when the animals decay and fall to the ground.

It is thought that the technique was developed in the wild in order to supplement the nutrients in poor quality soil – but even domestic varieties grown in your vegetable patch retain the ability.

And they're not the only ones. Potatoes are also insect killers! In fact, according to researchers, "We may be surrounded by many more murderous plants than we think."

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