Carnivorous plants are herbaceous plants which, due to the type of habitat they live in, have had to adapt in order to extract nutritive substances by digesting animals, and particularly protozoa, insects, and other arthropods, which they capture by means of traps derived from modified leaves. This particular form of adaptation allows them to survive in extreme environments, such as swamps, peat bogs, disaggregate calcareous rocks or rocks of volcanic origin, in which the soil is generally strongly acidic and with low levels or devoid of mineral salts, and especially of nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium. There are about 600 species of carnivorous plants throughout the world, comprising more than a dozen genera and families.
Carnivorous plants have developed various types of traps, which can normally be classified as active (Dionaea, Aldrovanda, Utricularia), semi-active (Drosera, Pinguicula), or passive (Nepenthes, Sarracenia, Cephalotus...), depending on the degree of active participation of the plant in capturing its prey.
