Touch Sensitivity

Bails bought me an amazing plant on the weekend - at the moment it is small and a bit worse for not having had a loving home for a while (garden centre's don't always nurture their plants well enough) but it has this weird thing where it is sensitive to touch. In the sun it's leaves are a bit like small ferns - open and delicate and beautiful but if something brushes against it the leaves close very suddenly and the limb that they are on hangs down like a dead thing (visibly does this). Currently it looks dead because it sleeps at night and all the leaves close up and hang down.

It looks like something from dinosaur times but on a very small scale - not like plants that we have now but all those ones that are carnivorous and have wells of poisonous enzymes. Reminiscent of triffids. Remember the TV programme called The Day of the Triffids? I still don't like certain sorts of plants much because of the fear of that programme - red tipped slimy looking specimens terrify me!

I also don't feel I can snip dead bits off this plant because it so visibly doesn't like to be touched - is there truth in the Roald Dahl story from 29 Kisses that told of roses screaming when they were cut and trees roaring in pain when being chopped down?