How Venus flytraps snap shut so fast

Hello Nature readers,
Today we learn how Venus flytraps snap shut with astonishing speed, explore the cutting-edge science happening at the World Cup and hear why scientists shouldn’t ignore the Pope’s AI message.

Flytraps soften to snap shut

Venus flytraps (Dionaea muscipula) snap shut by rapidly softening cells on the outer surface of their hinged ‘mouths’. Plants can relax the rigid outer walls of their cells to enable growth, but cell softening at the pace of flytraps is a phenomenon scientists haven’t seen before, says biomechanics researcher Simon Poppinga. Exactly what softens the cells is still unclear, but the team behind the study suggests one possibility is that that the arrival of prey triggers the release of a cocktail of enzymes that weaken the walls’ structure.

Football is life (and football is science)

The men’s football World Cup 2026 kicked off yesterday, and every team will have access to an artificial-intelligence tool that can analyse its players’ movements, and digital avatars of the players will help referees to model match action and spot illegal moves. To understand the role science will have in the beautiful game’s biggest tournament, Nature spoke to Franco Impellizzeri, the editor-in-chief of the journal Science and Medicine in Football. “Nowadays, most clubs and national teams have sport scientists,” he says. “It's also very common now to have PhD students embedded in the team.”

How did cruise-ship hantavirus start?

Researchers are investigating the source of a deadly outbreak of hantavirus aboard the cruise ship MV Hondius last month. A frequent suggestion — that a passenger came into contact with infected rodents while birdwatching in southern Argentina — “never made much sense,” says virologist Gustavo Palacios, because hantavirus is not known in the area. Genomic evidence from ship-board infections point to an area 2,000 kilometres to the north.

Scientists: don’t dismiss the Pope’s message

In May, religious leader Pope Leo XIV unveiled the first major publication of his papacy, in which he chose to warn society about the risks of artificial intelligence. The document “deserves serious attention from the scientific community” because it highlights a failure in the current state of regulation, argues ethicist Paolo Benanti, who advises the Vatican and the UN on AI. Heeding the Pope’s warning would involve AI researchers engaging with governance as a professional responsibility and deploying third-party auditors if AI systems are used in domains such as criminal justice and health care. Such papal messages are “imperfect responses to complex crises”, but can signal the need for society to take action, Benanti writes.

Futures: Doubting Thomas

An imprisoned clone devises an escape plan in the latest short story for Nature’s Futures series.

Five best science books this week

Andrew Robinson’s pick of the top five science books to read this week includes a look at birds through the eyes of an engineer and an ode to the magic and mysteries of aviation.

Podcast: a huge deep-sea whale graveyard

Researchers discovered a vast ‘whale necropolis’ in what's known as the Diamantina Zone, a deep 1,200-kilometre-long indentation on the ocean floor west of Australia. The find includes bones of extant and extinct beaked whales, dated to as much as 5.3 million years ago. “The question is why so many chose this place to rest in peace,” deep-sea scientist and study co-author Xiaotong Peng tells the Nature Podcast.