Hey Thoughty2 here.
The humble caterpillar is one of the most mind-shatteringly incredulous creatures on
planet Earth.
There’s so much more to this chubby worm than meets the eye.
If there was a prize for the animal most likely to be a Pokemon, then this suave fella would
take gold, because it evolves not once but twice.
First from a larva to a caterpillar then finally into a beautiful butterfly.
Actually, it’s so alike a Pokemon it already is one.
But how does a living, organic thing metamorphosise so consistently and so perfectly into a completely
different creature, of an entirely different shape and size?
You may be either grossed out when I tell you this, or totally amazed… but inside
the chrysalis the caterpillar completely liquidises, turning into a mush of gooey proteins and
fibres, as it slowly reforms into a butterfly over 10 days.
We’ll talk about metamorphosis more later but first, let’s start from the beginning
of this incredible insect’s life-cycle.
Because this amazing insect has so many secrets up its sleeve, or wings, that you’re not
going to want to miss any of it.
A female butterfly will find a nice looking tree and lay its tiny eggs on the underside
of the tree’s leaves, each egg contains a tiny, tiny caterpillar lava.
But the mother is extremely picky about which plant gets to play host to her eggs, each
different species of butterfly uses a different species of plant and only that species of
plant to lay its eggs upon.
This is all made a thousand times more complicated when you consider that there are over 20,000
species of butterfly in the world.
The egg is the size of a pinhead and the mother will lay 500 eggs at a time.
It then takes just four days for the egg to hatch, by this point the lava is freaking
starving so it eats its way out of its own egg then eats the rest of the eggshell, as
well as the entire leaf its on and it will probably have a good go at the leaf next to
it aswell.
This first meal is dangerous because the various sticky residues found inside some species
of leaves can cause the caterpillar lava’s mouth to gum up.
Many caterpillars die from this.
If it survives the great feast, then all this sustenance gives the greedy little fella energy
to grow into several times its size.
It will then take a break to shed its first layer of skin.
The caterpillar will then spend the next week eating leaves and growing into a full-sized
caterpillar.
Once fully-grown this ravenous tyrant can eat a full leaf in under an hour.
Once the caterpillar has gotten all nice and fat it prepares for the big change.
It finds a nice quiet spot underneath a branch and spins itself a silk button to attach itself
to the underside of the branch.
Other species get even fancier and spin a fine silk harness that they then sit inside.
Now begins the magic trick – it’s commonly thought that the caterpillar now makes its
chrysalis, also known as a pupa, but not a cocoon, that’s something else.
But it in fact grows this hardened shell underneath its top layer of skin in the week leading
up to its metamorphosis.
So when the time comes, all it has to do is shed its top layer of skin and its protective
pupa is all ready, for the transformation to begin.
But the caterpillar has another magic trick up its sleeve.
To disguise itself from predators, the pupa will change its colour to exactly match that
of whatever is behind it.
And so the transformation begins, taking roughly two weeks to turn from a furry slug into a
beautiful, winged insect.
But if you were able to see inside the pupa whilst this is taking place, you might be
rather horrified.
The transformation begins with the caterpillar releasing digestive enzymes to eat itself
alive; effectively turning itself into a soup.
Yuck.
If you were to cut open a pupa at the right time during metamorphosis, a goo would ooze
out.
But this magic goo contains everything needed to create a butterfly, and that is rather
incredible.
But not every cell liquefies.
Certain groups of highly organized cells remain as solids within the soup.
Over the course of two weeks this caterpillar curry slowly turns into a butterfly broth
and then into an actual butterfly, all from a gooey liquid.
It’s such an incredible phenomenon that scientists still aren’t quite sure how this
liquid organizes itself into a butterfly.
What’s so amazing about all of this is that everything about the creature changes during
the transformation, its shape, its taste, how it eats, how it moves and how it senses
– yet the butterfly is still able to remember its life as a caterpillar.
You would think that your brain being turned into a soup then reshaped into an entirely
new brain would erase all of your memories.
But a recent study showed that butterflies were able to remember the solution to a puzzle
that they were taught how to solve, when they were a caterpillar.
Meaning some of the synaptic connections in the caterpillar’s brain survive the soupification.
Making the humble caterpillar one of the true wonders of
the natural world.
Thanks for watching.