Devil-guts plant smells victims.(dodder vine)(Brief article)

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- Many plants smell, but the dodder vine smells. It sniffs the air for odors that waft from other plants. When the vine senses the right odor, it wraps itself around the plant and sucks out the plant's insides.

"It's probably one of the creepiest plants," says Colin Purrington, a biologist at Swarthmore College. "It's a horrible existence for the host plant. If plants could scream, they'd have the loudest screams when they had dodder attached."

Like other plants, the dodder begins life as a seed. When that seed sprouts, it can live on its…