Algae are trapped and killed without animals
stimulating the trap
According to all models published so far (Barthlott
etal. 2004; Lloyd 1942; Sydenham and Findlay
1973), the mechanism of the suction trap has to be
triggered by mechanical stimulation of sensitive hairs
at the trap door. However, unicellular algae as found
in our observations as well as by Mette et al. (2000)
or Jobson et al. (2000) are much too small to bend the
hairs or are even completely immobile. Therefore, the
following hypotheses are taken into account: