As a native Tennesseean I should remind our international friends that Toenail
Hollow is not in TN, but is a suburb of Seattle. Yankees are always up to very
weird stuff. :)
>>Paul, it was my understanding that the bugs in question would exhibit this
curling-up-and-plopping-into-the-pitcher behavior some time after they
had been crawling around the pitcher, eating nectar. .....
>>Or maybe I misunderstood the original posting?
No, you understood Barry, dead bugs may curl up and roll in, but I was speaking
of otherwise healthy ants that seemed to get so intoxicated from the nectar
that they couldn't walk straight. In my experience the Sarr.'s are pretty
efficient bug catchers. To me the thing unique about the purp. is that while
other tall Sarr.'s catch flying insects which are trapped after falling in
because 1) the pitcher is too narrow to allow them to fly and 2) the walls
won't allow them to climb, the purp seems to have something particularly
intoxicating to some ants. I know other CP nectar seems to do this, but I have
never seen it so dramatically demonstrated as in the S.purp.
Tom (now) in Fl.