No matter what, the butterfly is hands down, one of the most beautiful creatures gifted to us by the nature. There are about 20,000 species of butterflies and 160,000 species of moths recorded yet.
But the big question is, how?
How does something that crawls on 16 legs turn into something that is in every child’s colorbook?
Image Credits: Public Domain
We all are aware about the process of Metamorphosis. But let’s dig deeper into the research. Let’s focus on what actually happens to the body of a caterpillar while it becomes a pupae and what happens inside of it.
Inside of a cocoon, the larva literally melts its body (by its own digestive juices) into a liquid which is full of proteins, something which we’d like to call ‘Protein Soup’. At this stage the caterpillar inside is pretty much dead... It’s simply a soup with few body parts mixed in. Though slowly the soup starts to take a form and, Walhalla! It comes back to life. It is the protein soup which gradually becomes the wings and antennas of butterfly.
(The Butterfly do remember its life experience as a caterpillar, proving that the Protein Soup contains some nerves which survive the change of forms)
Though there is no such technology yet, that can show the actual change inside of the cocoon as a live TV show… But technology is not so far behind. Micro-CT techniques allows scientist to see the changes inside the pupae (kind of like an x-ray) though limited it is, in what it can see. [For video, CLICK HERE]
At the End, after butterfly breaks free of its shell, only things it lefts behind are the caterpillar skin and the cocoon.
Hope the day soon comes when scientist does not need to cut down the cocoons, killing those innocent Butterflies, for depth analysis to study Metamorphosis.
(Even caterpillar turning to cocoon is also fun to watch… Check it out here)
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