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This week we're looking at some really strange animals...or are they plants? Or both? We'll start with the sea anemone, then learn about a sea slug that photosynthesizes like a plant (sort of), then learn a little about whether algae is a plant or an animal...and then we're off and running through the wild world of carnivorous plants--including some carnivorous plants of mystery!\n\nThanks to Joshua Hobbs of A Degree in Nonsense for the suggestion, and to Simon for the article link I've already managed to lose!\n\nA sea anemone and some actual anemones. Usually pretty easy to tell apart:\n\n \n\nThe sea onion looks so much like an onion I can't even stand it. This is an ANIMAL, y'all!\n\n\n\nVenus flytrap sea anemone and actual Venus flytrap. It's usually pretty easy to tell these two apart too.\n\n\xa0\n\nThe eastern emerald elysia, a sea slug that looks and acts like a leaf:\n\n\n\nGiant kelp. Not a plant. Actually gigantic algae. Algae is neither a plant nor an animal:\n\n\n\nThe corpse flower (left) and the corpse lily (right). Both smell like UGH and both are extremely BIG:\n\n \n\nThe pitcher plant can grow very big:\n\n\n\nMaybe don't go near trees with a lot of skulls around them:\n\n\n\nPuya chilensis (the clumps in the foreground are its leaves; the spikes in the background are its flower spikes):\n\n\n\nShow transcript:\n\nWelcome to Strange Animals Podcast. I\u2019m your host, Kate Shaw.\n\nThis week we\u2019re going to explore the sometimes blurry line between animals and plants. Joshua Hobbs of a great new podcast A Degree in Nonsense suggested a type of carrion flower that smells like rotting flesh to attract insects, and friend of the pod Simon sent me an article about carnivorous plants. Our very first Patreon bonus episode was actually about carnivorous plants, so I\u2019ve expanded on that episode and added lots of interesting new content. Buckle up, folks, because we\u2019re going to cover a whole lot of ground today!\n\nOh, and Joshua also says, quote, \u201cI never had a pet growing up, but recently gained an interest in animals. Now after getting into your podcast and animal YouTube channels, I've got my first pet, a little corn snake named Arnold!\u201d So welcome to podcasting, Joshua and Arnold!\n\nLet\u2019s start by looking at an animal that resembles a plant. The sea anemone looks so much like a plant that it was named after an actual flower, the anemone, but the sea anemone is related to jellyfish. Most sea anemones attach to a rock or other hard surface most of their lives and don\u2019t move much, although they can creep along very slowly\u2014so slowly that snails are racecar drivers in comparison. Many species have a body shaped like a plant stem and colorful tentacles that resemble flower petals. But those tentacles aren\u2019t just to look pretty. The sea anemone uses them to catch prey. The tentacles are lined with stinging cells that contain venom, just like many jellyfish have. The venom contains neurotoxins that paralyzes a fish or other small animal so that the sea anemone can eat it.\n\nSo how does something that looks like a plant eat a fish?\n\nThe sea anemone has an interesting body plan. What looks like the stem of a plant is called the column, and in some species it\u2019s thin and delicate while in other species it\u2019s thick like a tree trunk. It sticks to its rock or whatever with an adhesive foot called a basal disc, and on the other end of the column is what\u2019s called the oral disc. Oral means mouth. The actual mouth is in the middle of the oral disc, surrounded by tentacles. The mouth is usually shaped like a slit, which if you think about it is sort of how people\u2019s mouths are too. The digestive system is inside the column. But there is no other opening into the body. The mouth is it. So like jellyfish, the mouth takes in food but it also expels waste, so, you know, not precisely a mouth like ours. When the sea anemone wants to eat, it uses its tentacles to push the food into its mouth.\n\nYou know the movie Finding Nemo?