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Study

The Venus flytrap Dionaea muscipula counts prey-induced action potentials to induce sodium uptake

Böhm, Jennifer; Scherzer, Sönke; Krol, Elzbieta; Al-Rasheid, Khaled A. S.; Hedrich, Rainer

Current Biology, 2016

Peer-reviewedphysiological studylaboratory

What they did

Trigger hairs were stimulated a controlled number of times, mechanically and electrically, while the trap's electrical activity, closure, gene expression and digestive secretion were measured.

Studied in
Dionaea muscipula
Sample size
many traps stimulated under electrode recording

What they found

One electrical impulse does nothing. Two within about twenty seconds close the trap. Three or more begin the production of the hormone that starts digestion, and around five switch on the genes for digestive enzymes and for the transporter that takes up sodium from the prey.

What it means

The authors' reading, and ours. Where they differ, that difference is the point.

How the authors put it

The trap counts action potentials, using the number of impulses to decide whether prey is present and how much digestive investment it warrants.

How NatureHQ reads it

This is the cleanest example in the dataset of counting without a nervous system. The plant is not merely reacting; it graduates its response by number, with distinct thresholds at two, three and five, and digestion is metabolically expensive enough that getting it wrong matters. It sits alongside crows and bees on our numerical-cognition page precisely because it shows that number-based decisions do not require neurons.

Limitations

  • Laboratory stimulation is more regular than a struggling insect.
  • Thresholds vary with temperature and with the state of the plant.
  • "Counting" here means threshold-dependent signalling, not enumeration in any conscious sense.

The experiment, explained

  • The flytrap that counts to five

    How does a plant with no nervous system decide that something in its trap is worth eating?

What this study is used for on NatureHQ

One study can inform several subjects. Here is everywhere this one is cited.

Finding the paper

Published by: Cell PressPublished in a Cell Press journal.

doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2015.11.057

This reference was resolved automatically against Crossref and OpenAlex on 2026-08-11.

NatureHQ summarises research in its own words and does not reproduce published text. Reviewed 2026-08-09.