Caterpillars: Nature's Magicians

"It's all but that's pretty neat to see. That's right. And to combat jet lag, they make fists with their toes. Yeah. What do you know? I wonder if they leap. I'd like to see that in slow motion. I wonder if all those legs and pro legs at once do that in concert. That would be pretty cool. Or if they inch, they just shoot themselves off. They inch so quickly that shoots them right off of the leaf. Yeah. So yeah, that's one used to the silk is like literal climbing rope. And like we said, like the solo caterpillar, which is many of the, I can't say brands, what a dummy. Varieties, species. There you go. You know, there's going around, they're eaten, they're laying an egg, they're using the silk as a like a lasso or maybe they might make a little nest. Like we said earlier, maybe they might restrain that snail. But those gregarious kinds that live in big groups, they really get going with the silk production. They make big nests in trees and around tree trunks. You've probably seen them before. Oh yeah, they're like big tents basically. If you've seen big, you know, it looks like sort of a really dense spider web. I guess sometimes those are spiders, right? Yeah, there's some kinds of spiders that do that, but I think probably more often than not what you're seeing are gregarious caterpillars getting together. Yeah, but they also use their little spinerets as like a trail, like hey, we're all going this way and we're gonna lay this little trail and we know that if you wanna get home, this is how you get home. What's neat is those trails are often intergenerational and so like an older generation will leave that silk for the next generation to use, and that next generation then can grow bigger and stronger because they didn't have to use that energy to create the silk for that leads to the food source. I thought that was pretty nice. Yeah, like handy down silk. Yeah, exactly. Or like, you know, link link of rope that grandpa gave you. Yeah. Same thing. Hand me down silk. Link the rope from grandpa. What else? There's another thing too that we haven't quite figured out. And we, I mean, the entomology world, and by we also mean them. It may or may not be advantageous to live in a gregarious community as opposed to being solitary. Because yes, it's easier to build a big shelter for yourself. If you have a bunch of other friends helping you, it's easier to find food. If you have other people looking at the same time you are and then telling you what they found, but at the same time, you're also competing with those same people, or the same caterpillars, I should say. And that's a big, that can be a big problem too. Yeah, I like caterpillars or people too. Exactly. And if there's a disease, you know, it's going to spread pretty readily within that population, if they're all living together. But I think, you know, we've held off long enough, we should we should talk about that metamorphosis. Okay. Which is what everyone wants to know about. And that is basically a caterpillar is doing its thing. It's going through those molds. It's that fifth molt. And they say, you know what? This has been great. But I think I'm tired of eating finally. I'm going to go off and wander off into the woods and find a safe spot. And I'm going to pupate everybody. And when you see me again, I will be the most beautiful thing you've ever seen. Yeah, pretty neat. And this is where the terminology gets really confusing if you do any research on this. Yeah, I can for sure. So the pupa is often referred to as the form, the body form that the centipede or that the caterpillar is in as it enters the transformation, right? Yes. It's actually the life stage like the caterpillar is the larval life stage, the butterfly or the moth is the adult, the pupa is the life stage in between. But for all intents and purposes, you can also say that's a butterfly pupa, although, or that's a moth pupa, right? That's the easiest, most understandable part of it. It starts to get really strange from there because the butterfly caterpillar, when it emerges from that fifth molt, it has a special kind of skin on it. And over time, when it turns upside down and hangs from a leaf and begins its transformation, that skin hardens, and it forms basically the protective layer that's going to protect that caterpillar-turned-butter butterfly as it undergoes its transformation. And that's called a chrysalis, but just butterfly caterpillars do that, right? Not moths. I think that's right. And then I think it's just moths because they don't form chrysalis or chrysalis. They are the only ones to spin a cocoon to protect themselves, correct? Right, and that cocoon starts protect themselves, correct? Right. And that cocoon starts out kind of soft, but that eventually hardens as well. But I think that's right. But the chrysalis itself is not some like shell they build. Like it is, it is the thing. Yeah, it's the outer layer of skin. Okay. Yeah, because it can actually twitch and move as a defense. Yeah. Like it's a thinking sentient, well, not thinking this early, but it is a shell that is a living thing. It's not like, let me build this, you know, this thing to get into. It is the thing that it is in. Right. So imagine if you underwent this transformation, you would probably go off into a corner and kind of ball up, maybe in a bit of a fetal position, but then imagine as part of this process, all of your skin fused together and turned into like an outer shell rather than, you know, this thing covering you, it's like this now this big ball that you're now kind of separated from inside and you're doing your thing inside. That's kind of like what the chrysalis is like. Yeah. And so we mentioned the silk like the uses as like a climbing rope and stuff like that and to build little nests. It really comes in handy when it's time to pupate because they use this silk in a variety of ways. There's more than one way to skin a cat and there's more than one way for a caterpillar to metamorphosize. Sometimes, like you said, they hang upside down from that leaf, so they've spun like a little silk pad that attaches to something. Sometimes, they create like a little hammock. Sometimes, they make like a little sling in concert with a stick. There are different ways that they can do this, but it always involves using silk to sort of stabilize itself, either upside down or right side, upper sideways or whatever. And then they start to do that thing, whether it's a moth spinning that cocoon or just the gradual transformation of caterpillar into chrysalis. Right. And then so once that happens, once the cocoon is full or the chrysalis is hardened, this, and one of the most amazing things that on earth happens in there, and it's neat because we've gotten to the point where we have photography that can peer inside of this without harming the caterpillar, and they have like time lapse videos of this transformation. And as the thing turns more and more into what's obviously like a butterfly or a moth, and you see it hanging upside coma, the movie version. It's really neat, but it also gives you this. It has this kind of regal and majestic feel to it as well. I produced a lot of emotions in me, apparently. Yeah, I mean, this isn't the science-y explanation, but it's almost as if you can take a tray of, put a bunch of spaghetti and meatballs in a dish and cover it up, and then when you open it up, it's a lasagna. Yeah. And you're like, how did that happen? How did that even happen? So this is how it happens. The caterpillar breaks itself down into a soup of cells, like it's basically like a caterpillar soup for a while. And some of the cells keep their form generally or at least stay attached to one another. So those leg cells, they change, they look different. Like a caterpillar's actual true legs look different from the butterflies' true legs, but they're still the same cells. They rearrange themselves a little bit. Most of the other cells just completely come apart. Turn into imaginal cells, which are analogous to our stem cells, and that they can turn into any kind of cell. And then it reconfigures itself using the same cells, same amount, same everything, into a butterfly. It reconfigures itself over the course of about two weeks. It's unbelievable. Yeah, it really is. Like my brain breaks every time I try to make sense, especially when you see what comes out. You know, I mean, if it came out looking like a dung beetle, like that would still be awesome, but to come out looking like a butterfly with those iridescent wings and the little faces on those wings, it's just unbelievable. And I guess, I mean, evolutionarily speaking, this is all to eventually get to like a pollinator. I don't understand that this is where I think that science has kind of thrown off. They're like, the best explanation I saw is that it's better than having two things compete for the same food source, but that doesn't really make any sense, you know, because that doesn't make any sense to me at all. I don't understand that, but that was the best explanation I saw and I didn't even understand it. So as to the why? Yeah. Yeah. Like, it's just so strange. I just don't understand it. And everything goes through life stages. We go through puberty. We become adults. We go from infant babies to grown adults. But there's not a period where we stop, and over the course of two weeks, completely reconfigure ourselves into a new form. There's not that many things out there that do do that, and we just don't fully understand why it happens, and maybe we never will, and I think that'd be just fine. Although I would argue that the Josh Clarke I knew 15 years ago has catapillar-like, has now emerged as a beautiful butterfly. Thank you. I remember reading when Christopher Hitchens became a conservative. One of the the liberal members of parliament said that this is one of the rare instances where the butterfly turns back into a slug. Oh no. Yeah. Wow. I like to hear what that exit. I think I've written 2007 and it's still stuck with me. Yeah, that's a good one. We didn't take our second break, did we? No, it's time. All right. Well, let's take our second break. We'll probably still be talking about this metamorphosis, you know, when we come back. So just be prepared. — Chuck uses Die Hard as an analogy for how caterpillars use silk to attach to leaves and swing away from predators like John McClane." — Chuck

"Like, what's his name from reading Rainbow, but on Star Trek, the next generation? — Josh compares caterpillar eyes arranged in a semi-circle to Reading Rainbow host Levar Burton's visor from Star Trek: The Next Generation." — Josh

"Like, what's his name from reading Rainbow, but on Star Trek, the next generation? Lavard? — Josh references Levar Burton's character and eyewear from Star Trek: The Next Generation as a comparison to caterpillar eye placement." — Josh