Do butterflies have memories of their caterpillar days? In order to become a butterfly, it dissolves all its internal organs into liquid

All kinds of life in nature are worthy of awe, such as when a very ugly caterpillar, breaks out of its chrysalis and becomes a beautiful butterfly, the process is both magical and shocking. So, can a beautiful butterfly remember that it was once a caterpillar? To become a butterfly, what sacrificial feats did the caterpillar once make?

A butterfly is an insect whose growth process is "completely metamorphic"

In understanding the above two issues, we first introduce the growth process of butterflies. How does it change from a caterpillar to a butterfly? Like many insects, the growth process of butterflies is called complete metamorphosis, which is so called because, during the life of a butterfly, it is in various stages of development, which means that the appearance of each developmental stage is completely different. An adult butterfly, which has a very short life span of only one year, goes through four distinct developmental stages in its life.

1、The initial primitive look is a butterfly egg

Because butterflies are oviparous insects, it is said that their earliest initial primitive appearance is a very small butterfly egg. In the green leaves, these young eggs are to go through a period of development, the first thing they have to do is to break out of their shells to eat their eggshells, the next to better grow, these larvae will nibble on green leaves to get nutrients and promote growth.

During this period, the larvae will only grow rapidly if they keep eating and eating and eating. It only takes about three weeks for the larvae, which are originally smaller than 2 mm, to grow, and at this time their bodies will show obvious changes, with the head and tail growing out and eight pairs of legs growing from the thorax to the abdomen. Speaking of which some people will be curious to ask: "If caterpillars have legs, why do they crawl with their bodies bowed?"

Here we have to knock on the blackboard to highlight. Because the caterpillar's thorax's three legs are used to carry things or walk. And the abdominal legs are used to fold the body and push the ground to get itself moving. Around the age of five, this larva migrates to other parts of the green leaf, such as the high or lowest part, and then it becomes a pupa.

The process of becoming a pupa is subversive to our perceptions. Because the pupa is not at all formed outside the caterpillar's body as we think when it is formed inside the larva. After the formation of the pupa, the larvae shed their outer clothing like a snake molting its skin. At this point, the pupae seem to be instantly petrified as if they are motionless because they have to focus on one thing which is deformation. What is even more shocking is that most of the internal organs of the nymphs have been liquefied at this time.

2. The pupa's organs are dissolved

Humans from the recognition of caterpillars becoming butterflies is a long historical process, in the 17th century, people thought that caterpillars and butterflies are completely two different creatures. And previously a British researcher named William Harvey published his opinion that the caterpillar, is a simple worm and the chrysalis and it is completely two different creatures, perhaps eggs hatched from other unknown creatures. And the butterfly is metamorphosed inside the chrysalis.

Because of the underdeveloped science and technology at that time, this view lasted until the end of the 17th century. Later when a researcher through the microscope dissection, only to understand the butterfly, the moth is from caterpillars such as larvae growth.

When a caterpillar transforms into a pupa, it will form its exterior into a chrysalis shell, and then its internal organs will begin to dissolve in the form of liquid. At this point, the inside of the chrysalis is completely a very thick protein broth. Let's use an analogy, if the pupa is an alchemy furnace, then the larvae inside are smelting all kinds of "dan pills", the furnace will melt the herbs, and finally into a dan.

Why the larvae will melt? This process is very amazing because it mainly lies in the body of the larvae and contains a kind of undifferentiated cell group, it is called adult cells, after the dissolution of these larvae cells are destroyed, but will not disappear, only the planned cell death. These adult cells will only rapidly differentiate and reproduce, at which point a real insect body that has been recreated will appear in front of us.

As time passes, eyes will appear inside the nearly transparent chrysalis, wings (the wings that grow out are from the adult discs they have brought with them since childhood to grow and develop), and finally will gradually take on the body of a butterfly, shedding its shell from the head of the chrysalis to form the final appearance of the butterfly. Speaking of this, some people can't help but ask: " caterpillars will dissolve their internal organs into liquid, directly sacrificing themselves to become butterflies, cocoon these things happen inside the butterfly, whether the butterfly remember? Is it able to know that it was a caterpillar? "

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Does the butterfly remember that its predecessor was a caterpillar? Do the internal organs dissolve remember?

Needless to say, the growth process of butterflies is indeed completely perverse. In long-term research, researchers have understood that caterpillars have their memories when they are larvae. But when they metamorphose into butterflies, scientists are unsure whether the butterflies can remember that they were once caterpillars. To conduct the study, scientists at Georgetown University conducted an experimental study in which they tested whether butterflies have this ability to remember.

Researchers Martha Weiss first trained the caterpillars, first by making them hate the smell of ethyl alcohol, and each time the caterpillars passed where ethyl alcohol was located, they would ask for the smell of the stuff. Then the researchers will stimulate them with micro-currents, in the long training, the caterpillars will hate the smell of ethyl alcohol very much.

When the caterpillars became butterflies, the researchers again conducted similar experiments on the butterflies to determine whether they remembered the smell of ethyl alcohol. In the experiment, most of the butterflies also showed that they did not like the smell of ethyl alcohol, which means that this irritating and unpleasant smell of ethyl alcohol continued from the caterpillar period to the butterfly stage.

From this, scientists have deduced that the butterfly can retain some of the information it learned as a caterpillar, and, certainly, at least the memory of the last two ages as a caterpillar can also be retained. But it's one thing to be able to remember what you don't like, and it remains to be studied further whether you can remember your internal organs being dissolved into liquid during the caterpillar stage.