There are predatory unicellular and multicellular plants with visual sensors, locomotion, and rudimentary behaviors.
Like unicellular animals, these plants have the potental of evolving into intelligent life forms.
Motile Carnivorous Algae & Plants
Euglenophyta: Organisms in the Euglenophyta have two flagella, a contractile vacuole, a photoreceptive eyespot, several chloroplasts, lack a cell wall, and can live as autotrophs or heterotrophs. Some autotrophic species of Euglena become heterotrophic when light levels are low.
Noctiluca: One of the marvels of the ocean is a little creature called Noctiluca scintillans, commonly known as the seasparkle. It is a dinoflagellate, a little single-celled algae. Floating in swarms of millions these organisms cause the glowing of the sea. The archetype of a dinoflagellate has a flattened spherical body shape and is armoured by plates covered with an intricate texture. They propel themselves with two (or sometimes more) flagella. One is pointed downward, the other is running as a spiral through a groove running along the equator of the cell. Noctiluca however has a different body plan. It forms a gas bag that enables the creature to float right under the surface of the ocean. There still are two flagella although one is exceptionally thick. This large one is clearly visible while the other one is very insignificant (just noticeable in the picture above the large flagella).
Noctiluca,commonly known as the Sea sparkle is bioluminescent. They cause the lighting of the sea. Noctiluca is a dinoflagellate. Unlike most of these single celled organisms Noctiluca is carnivorous. It captures it's prey with it's long tentacle. They can grow up to 1 mm in diameter.
Volvox: Volvox is a Chlorophyte, or green alga. It exists as a grand spherical colony. Each little alga within the colony bears two flagella, whip-like hairs. The individual alga are connected to each other by thin strands of cytoplasm that enable the whole colony to swim in a coordinated fashion. The individual alga also have small red eye spots.
Dionaea: Dionaea muscipula, the Venus Flytrap, has evolved jaw motion and the ability to count to two. If one if it's trap's trigger hairs are touched, nothing happens, but if a trigger hair is touched twice in a row, or two hairs are touched in sequence, the trap closes.
Aldrovanda: An aquatic carnivore, related to the venus flytrap. The traps on Aldrovanda are very similar in appearance to that of Dionaea muscipula, the major difference being the prey items which are aquatic invertebrates such as Daphnia, large copepods, and other crustaceans. The traps are arranged in a whorl around a central stem, looking like spokes on a wheel, thus its common name, the water wheel plant.
The snap-trap leaves of the aquatic waterwheel plant (Aldrovanda) resemble those of Venus' flytrap (Dionaea), its distribution and habit are reminiscent of bladderworts (Utricularia), but it shares many reproductive characters with sundews (Drosera). Moreover, Aldrovanda has never been included in molecular phylogenetic studies, so it has been unclear whether snap-traps evolved only once or more than once among angiosperms. Using sequences from nuclear 18S and plastid rbcL, atpB, and matK genes, we show that Aldrovanda is sister to Dionaea, and this pair is sister to Drosera. Our results indicate that snap-traps are derived from flypaper-traps and have a common ancestry among flowering plants, despite the fact that this mechanism is used by both a terrestrial species and an aquatic one. Genetic and fossil evidence for the close relationship between these unique and threatened organisms indicate that carnivory evolved from a common ancestor within this caryophyllid clade at least 65 million years ago.
Slime Molds: This fungus-like organism spends parts of its lifecycle as mobile amoeba-like single cells. These then aggregate into a large slug-like creature that moves around in search of food. Finally, the slug metamorphoses into a mushroom-like fruiting body and releases spores.
Audrey 2: This film contains murder and mayhem when Seymour, a flower shop employee, realizes he is growing a blood thirsty, man-eating plant. In order to keep his beloved plant alive, Seymour is forced to kill to feed his plant's hunger. Soon our friendly man-eating plant is out of control and somebody needs to stop him!!! Watch this deadly plant fight for its life in 3D!
