Hot Rats

Sir David Attenborough was my first childhood hero. "Life On Earth" was the first tv show I remember watching, and I still go back to it at times. Even thirty years ago, Attenborough had perfected the kindly school teacher/grandfather/ country veterinarian archetype, a perfect tour guide through the wonders of nature's creation. Perhaps I found it a bit odd to discover that botanists on an expedition in the Philippines have named a new species of carnivorous plant the "Nepenthes Attenborughii" in his honor. (As an aside, and no disrespect to the very dead Carl Linnaeus, but do we still need Latin nomenclature for all wildlife?)
The newly discovered bit of flora is a variety of pitcher plant which traps rodents and slowly dissolves them with flesh eating enzymes. There are many varieties of Nepenthes (Greek for "without sorrow") plants, mainly found in the Southeast Asian Malay archipelago. They tend to lure their prey in with flowers and nectar and trap them in their long pitchers. Insects are the usual fare but several kinds including the newly coined one for Sir David are known to devour mice and rats.