Hello grasscity. Starting today, I'll be conducting an experiment. I have two venus flytraps that I've just purchased, and I've learned how to properly care for them. Now, one I am going to feed just crickets and distilled water. This will be the control test. The second flytrap will be fed crickets, but with an added variable. These crickets will actually be buttered, with cannabutter. It will also recieve distilled water. Now it is in a sense cannibalism, seeing as they are both plants. But this is an experiment to see how the plant grows in comparison to the normal plant. The plants are kept humid in a pot with a plastic dome over it. They sit on my windowsill where they got partial sunlight throughout the day. Right now, it is the time of day and they are recieving direct sunlight. The plants are healthy so far, but the cannabutter is cooling in the fridge right now. Tomorrow I'll set it out to solidify, and get some crickets buttered. I will be using a normal plastic butter knife to butter the crickets. The crickets are not adult, they are small seeing as my plant is still relatively young. The traps cannot fully close around a large adult cricket. Each will be misted with water once a day to stay humid. As far as I am concerned, the plant does not get high. It does not have a brain or nervous system, so the only impact the THC will have on the plant is its growth. I've prepared a ruler so that I can measure each plant with each week that passes. Do you have a suggestion for experiment? Have a prediction of the experiment's outcome? Write a comment and contribute to the discussion.
interesting... there are some quote unquote, carnivorous plants that will spread across forest floors and catch falling floiage etc. maybe you could do another experment with one of them, don't recall thier name though also are the starting plants the same size? other than that, show us some pics as well, interesting stuff... hold on! if you got enough bud to feed some PLANTS cannabutter, why aren't you sharing with me man?
[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGRN39oifsE]YouTube - Feed Me (Git It) - Little Shop of Horrors[/ame]
lol this is great. if you're into carnivorous plants, you should check out sundews. they're my favorite.
how are you going to measure their growth? Don't just use from the soil up because it can flex and change as the plant grows. You need to use some point relitive to the plant that you can keep the same for both plants. I would put something across the top of the pot they are each in and measure from that. Then you can just use the same thing each time and get a better reading of how much growth has happened. (at least in terms of height) I think the one getting the butter will grow more, just because it's getting more energy by way of being fed that little bit extra each time. Although it depends on if the plant can break down the butter into energy (which I have no idea).
would it be possible to use the same pot for each, weigh out the pot/dirt beforehand, and then measure the weight as they grow?
do they get anything from the soil? I honestly don't know much about these plants so not sure if they only get energy from eating things or if they get some from the soil also. If they don't then yea in the same pot would make it easier to compare. Otherwise I would just get 2 similar pots, set it all up and weigh them each prior. and x2 for pic's!
haha i didn't mean put them both in the same pot, i meant get 2 of the same pots and put one plant in each of them, then you can just weigh them out beforehand and measure their growth that way.
prediction - the one you give the butter to will die/be stunted because butter will be completely foreign to it... do you really think that a plant is going to be able to handle a processed food meant for humans? I honestly know little to nothing about the creatures, but it seems like you should do some more research before you start. Then, again maybe you have experimented with them before and I am just ignorant to the plant's capabilities.
I think its possible the plant could break down the butter. I mean, it obviously has a way to break down the proteins found in a cricket.
Can i come to your house once a day and eat a cannabutter cricket? I dont care, ill eat those fuckin crickets if i get high. I just dont see that the purpose of this experiment is. Sounds like a waste of cannabutter and i am honestly jealous of your little flytrap.
it's not the protein that would be the problem. It's the fat, cholesterol, and sodium(assuming salted butter) that might give it some trouble. Even with unsalted butter it would have to break down enormous amounts of fat compared to the protein in butter. In unsalted butter the fat to protein ratio is more than 90 to 1. In the amounts that are used to cover one cricket, the amount of protein is virtually zero. Butter's mass is made up of 80% fat and less than 1% protein. Learn for yourself. Nutrition Facts and Analysis for Butter, without salt Once again, I have done no research on venus fly traps until reading this thread. I'm not trying to rain on anyone's parade. I just want to help OP save time and money on his experiment. Seriously I've done like 30 min worth of google research and I'm pretty sure the plant fed butter is going to die. Doesn't have anything to do with the THC. It just can't process a substantial amount of fat. Maybe if you use tiny tiny amounts of butter it could work. But then how will you expect to see any results from the THC? I think the best bet for this to work is to find someway to deliver THC without fat as the vehicle. How to do this I don't know. Hahaha sorry for the novel. I just think it's an interesting idea for an experiment and your current methods probably won't give you any clear findings
to solve this issue, i would THINK that either using the plants i metnioned earlier(because they eat plant material and the bud may have an effect) or use a pitcher plant(these have been known to capture and eat small bats and birds or rats and mice, so they may be able to break down fats etc. but these have to have water in them so, if you use a pitcher you must control the amount of water going into each pitcher)
It's a good idea, but you need at least three plants to do this, but 3x3 would be ideal: 3 fed just crickets 3 fed buttered crickets (no THC) 3 fed cannacrickets crickets If you only have two groups, one fed crickets and the other fed cannacrickets, you can't tell whether the butter itself is having an impact. The only way to do that is with a third group. Prediction: your results will be meaningless (in terms of THC effect) without a third group, sorry.
exactly, you're not going to know what is a result of the butter vs. what is a result of the THC. In all honesty, the plant doesn't have THC receptors, obviously, so THC alone would do nothing of any significance. Plus, with a sample size of 2, any results would be meaningless. Any two plants, even with identical genetics, will not grow exactly the same way. so you may see that one plant is significantly larger than the other, but that most likely doesn't have anything to do with the cannabis and would have happened anyway. In order for the results to mean anything, you have to have several of each and compare averages. If you had 10 getting fed normal crickets and 10 getting fed buttered crickets and noticed that the buttered ones, on average, were only half as tall as the normal ones, then you'd know you had a real result, rather than just one plant growing taller by chance.
I wish this guy would post back. Get's me all excited and doing research and now, poof. Agreed that JayF's setup is the best idea in this thread without trying to figure out some other delivery of the THC.