Link of the Moment: Deadly Fluids II

The Soft Matter Blog highlights a paper from MIT that discussed the rheological behavior of the fluid from carnivorous plants.  The paper is available for free download until November 18, 2011.  Registration is required at RSC to download the paper.

A Deadly Viscoelastic Fluid

While searching around for rheology blogs, I found the blog Entertaining Research. In a 2007 post, Guru found a paper by Gaume and Fortiere that studied the viscoelastic properties of pitcher plants from Borneo. When the fluid in the plant was diluted, it was able to retain some of its insect-trapping properties. The authors attribute this to the elastic properties of the fluid and found a correlation between the fluid’s Deborah number and the effectiveness of the fluid’s ability to capture insects.