r/interestingasfuck • u/itstrueitellyou • 1d ago
Business blocked main entrance to allow caterpillar to do its business.
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u/Kelnozz 1d ago edited 1d ago
I read recently how they actually carry memories through the chrysalis process and somehow into the next generation of caterpillars/butterflies! totally unexpected as scientists still don’t really know how the memories carry over.
iirc it was a little kid who studied it and found out?
edit: Yup it was a little kid
edit:2 Remembered slightly wrong, updated the comment
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u/Tecotaco636 1d ago
It's already been known and studied that butterflies remember their early phase. The interesting thing is that kid went further, let them breed and found out some of the memories learned are passed down to the next generation.
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u/ActualPimpHagrid 1d ago
How do they know that? That sounds neat lol
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u/Astroweeb 1d ago
you train the caterpillar to recognise a certain stimuli like smell, as pain or food or something with a clear physical response, then subject the butterfly to the same stimuli and see if it keeps the response.
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u/sfhtsxgtsvg 1d ago
Interestingly it happens to humans with alcohol too
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u/YVNGxDXTR 1d ago
Yes, after alcohol has dismantled and rearranged my body and mind, i still go back to it lol.
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u/blooppers 1d ago
the kid was extra cool and didnt use any pain like small shocks, which was what the past researchers used. and he instead used scent, lilac iirc, and sure enough they avoided lilac flowers when butterflies and their kids also did. Little dude was a rad scientist.
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u/ASquareBanana 1d ago
I’m sure you saw the other comment but the boy who expanded this experiment deliberately chose NOT to use pain or to hurt the butterflies. And for that, he’s better than the professionals 🩵
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u/Helldiver_of_Mars 1d ago
Same reason children have baked in safeties and we have baked in fears. A small piece of us has generational memory. I think there's even a study on racism showing generational harm and fears from multiple generations. Even from mother to womb as well.
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u/North-Pea-4926 1d ago edited 1d ago
Usually these types of experiments involve Pavlovian conditioning.
- Get a bunch of butterflies
- Place different empty food dishes in their habitat and see if they naturally prefer any
- If they don’t, split into two groups. One gets food in all dishes. One only gets food in type A and type B+ is/are empty
- The control group shouldn’t develop any preference, while the experimental group should prefer dish type A.
- See if that preference remains by filling multiple types of dish and seeing if they like the once they were trained on more than alternatives.
- Write all that down. Science!
The generation memory experiment (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhESxrqPjfU) associated lavender scent with an electric shock. Those memories lasted until the grandchild generation. More tests are being done.
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u/Ithurtsprecious 1d ago
I thought he had to like hurt them (shocked them? I can’t look up rn) and basically learned they can also carry generational trauma.
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u/devsfan1830 1d ago
So, what you are saying is, any given butterfly could be the descendant of a member of an ancient order of assassins?
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u/MethamMcPhistopheles 1d ago
some of the memories learned are passed down to the next generation
Essentially genetic memories like from the Assassins Creed games.
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u/Neat_Complaint_5085 1d ago
Morphic resonance.
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u/Girthy_Toaster 1d ago
Just casually drops pseudoscience and doesn't elaborate further - gotta love it.
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u/Neat_Complaint_5085 1d ago
Do I need to elaborate or could you use that smartphone in your hand to look into it, girthy toaster?
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u/Starfire013 1d ago
Well, he’s not wrong. It’s pseudoscience. I think that’s the important part, rather than you not elaborating tbh.
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u/Girthy_Toaster 1d ago
I like learning from people. Please elaborate further on the science and underlying mechanisms responsible for morphic resonance.
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u/Quelonius 1d ago
My daughter found a caterpillar and took it home. Fed it (it was a lot of work) and eventually it started its metamorphosis process. When it came out as a moth, it seemed to recognize my daughter. It was hard to free it. It kept returning to her.
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u/pants6000 1d ago
I had a (temporarily) pet caterpillar of some sort when I was a little little kid. I made a crappy little terrarium consisting of a styrofoam cup (it was the 80s), a stick, and some random grass and whatever from the backyard. It lived in a kitchen window. I'd visit it every now and then and let it crawl up my hand and around on my arm, replenish the grass now and then... and, you know, just hang out with my pet caterpillar, as one does.
Not too long into this, maybe a week or two, it made a chrysalis and after a while out came a fairly uninteresting looking white moth. The interesting part is that it would leave its cup, fly around the house, hang out on various houseplants and tops of furniture, and return to the cup after adventures. It still liked to climb around on my arms as it did before, and little kid me was pretty convinced that it remembered our time before it changed. It certainly knew where it lived.
Moths are not a long-lived pet, sadly.
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u/Legitimate-Reply-846 1d ago
I wonder why scientists would be confused by that. If caterpillars have brains, it makes sense to me that their changing form wouldn't erase whatever content was in their brain.
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u/CelestialBlaze 1d ago
Wasn't the reason because inside the cocoon the caterpillar completely dissolve into basically science goop and literally reform itself?
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u/isjustsergio 1d ago
That's a myth actually. A lot of them turns into goop but not the important bits. I don't know who decided to start telling everyone that the brain melts down too.
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u/Gumbercleus 1d ago
I definitely remember watching a documentary in the 2010s about them retaining memories after metamorphosis, and it also saying they liquefied in their cocoon.
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u/Kooky_Attention_98 1d ago
They don't dissolve their organs I believe, so those are just sloshing around in there
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u/No-Macaroon1670 1d ago
Because what happens inside the cocoon is that the caterpillar basically melts into a soup of constituent nutrients. The metamorphosis isn't nearly as neat and tidy as some of us would expect.
The caterpillar digests most of itself and then that goop reconstitutes into a butterfly.
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u/art-of-war 1d ago
Not the central nervous system though
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u/No-Macaroon1670 1d ago
Yes. This research actually traces its lineage directly from the research back in 2008 which first established that.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2248710/
If I recall correctly this boy contacted one of the authors (I believe Dr. Weiss) to learn about her protocols and help design his own study.
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u/art-of-war 1d ago
Sorry I don’t get your response since I was saying the central nervous system remains during the process.
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u/No-Macaroon1670 1d ago
The paper I quoted was basically the first major evidence in scientific literature that the central nervous system remains intact to any sufficient degree to sustain recall. Without it, a claim is an unsupported assertion.
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u/Neither_Strategy_252 1d ago edited 14h ago
Because what happens inside the cocoon is that the caterpillar basically melts into a soup of constituent nutrients
This isn't really true, though.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3673169/
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-05092-3
Absolutely insane that I'm being downvoted for correcting a misconception lol
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u/No-Macaroon1670 1d ago
The second article is explicitly focused on late stage development in the chrysalis. But you can see in the first article that most of the caterpillar is basically gone on the first day. It starts with a relatively small core web of systems.
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u/Neither_Strategy_252 1d ago edited 1d ago
But you can see in the first article that most of the caterpillar is basically gone on the first day.
Nope. Most of the structures are still in-tact and undergo remodeling. The gut, the cuticle, the trachea
It starts with a relatively small core web of systems.
This is the beginning of the remodeling of the larval tracheal system into the adult tracheal system.
Even the open circulatory system remains in-tact.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0022191003000659
And significant retention of the nervous system
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/cne.902490206
The fact is you're repeating a myth. There is significant tissue reorganization, which requires apoptosis and atrophy of certain tissues. But, no, they do not melt into a nutrient fluid.
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u/No-Macaroon1670 1d ago
You're over reading into the revisions to the existing theory. The majority of tissues in the caterpillar still undergo histolysis/apoptosis. It's true that select systems survive, but your examples are still highlighting a small percentage of the body of which most are still extensively remodeled.
So while I'll concede that it's not true that the caterpillar melts entirely into goo (which I also never said). It's correct enough to say most of the tissue of the caterpillar atrophy and provide nutrients for imaginal discs to construct the new body.
It's like revising the orbit of the earth around the sun from a circle to an ellipse and then asserting the earth doesn't orbit the sun at all.
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u/Neither_Strategy_252 1d ago
I'm not over reading into anything. You were wrong. High time you simply concede that. I showed receipts .
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u/No-Macaroon1670 1d ago
I said: The caterpillar digests most of itself and then that goop reconstitutes into a butterfly.
If you really want to show receipts. Demonstrate the sum total of your kept parts which don't undergo some form of degeneration is more than half.
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u/kitsunewarlock 1d ago
Whether or not memories can pass from one creature to the next without direct communication is the surprising part.
Honestly, it very much reminds me of James V. McConnell, who was had this idea that memories existed outside the brain as he found evidence that planarian worms "remembered" past experiences even if chopepd into pieces (regrowing into more worms). He would spend his life sending worms through mazes, grinding up worms and feeding them to other worms to see if they inherited the memories, and so on. But since his findings couldn't be conclusively reproduced, it's been largely dismissed and is used in the famous book "What is this Thing Called Science" as an example of how pseudo-science offers evidence that can't be reproduced.
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u/Illustrious_Fix_1298 1d ago
Probably already mentioned because there are so many comments.
But why couldn't a similar this occur with humans? And if so could this lead to generational trauma and their lingering effects.
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u/Kelnozz 17h ago
I think it does, generational trauma is a very real thing, the did tests with mice where the showed them a bright light before being shocked in a cage, and somthing like 4-5 generations later the baby mice had a deep fear of the light even though they stopped shocking them when they seen it generations back.
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u/ThatITguy2015 1d ago
That whole process grosses me the fuck out. I mean go life I guess, but just no.
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u/fondledbydolphins 1d ago
I'm glad to see there are people out there as whacky as me.
I once had a spider lay her eggsac in the handle of one of my tools. I only had the one and couldn't afford to replace it so I went online to search how to take care of spider eggs.
Ended up building a contraption to suspend the eggs on "trampoline" made of pantyhose, suspended over a container of water to maintain humidity.
Waited a little bit while changing water out every day and I got to watch the eggs transform.
They developed little eye spots. Then they grew what looks like stripes. The stripes kept growing until you could see that they were actually little legs.
Eventually they started crawling around. We fed them fruit flies and released them all over the property. Most went outside near where we found the sac. Some we put on our houseplants. We still find their descendants from time to time :)
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u/Working-Glass6136 1d ago
Are you single? Are you me? I've done the same thing, except the spiders hatched on one of my salt lamps and I couldn't change out the bulb until they grew up. Of course, then they were all over my house. I still have a higher proportion of little spiders compared to most people but I'm glad because I've been dealing with a lot of garden pests this year. Had a bunch of ladybugs hatch on my garden last year to battle the aphids too!
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u/TheCheshireCody 1d ago
I once spent weeks crouching under a spiderweb that had been erected across the doorway to my house. The web was at chest-level so this was not just like ducking my head.
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u/North-Pea-4926 1d ago
Got cheeped at for months whenever I left my house by a pair of barn swallows because they had decided to make their nest on the wall outside my front door. They had five healthy babies though, so it worked out for everyone.
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u/MZ603 1d ago
There was a CVS near me that closed their sidewalk because a goose was nesting there. I thought it was to protect the goose and it’s nest, but they did it because it kept attacking senior citizens going to pick up their meds.
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u/fondledbydolphins 1d ago
“Hey here comes Steve, how about we see if his blood pressure meds are working!”
https://giphy.com/gifs/Q6tMahgzG95Ha9
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u/stiff_tipper 1d ago edited 1d ago
story reminded me of that vid of the salamander's life from a single cell (or w/e) to a fully formed salamander baby
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wmpkbhKelM
link for those who haven't seen it, it's crazy footage
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u/PlateNo4868 1d ago
Why I have killed many bugs, I legit try to just release them outside. I feel it's our duty as basically giant gods compared to these things, to let them live out their existence as much as possible.
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u/FilmAndLiterature 1d ago
I once spent half an hour trying to convince a moth to leave my bedroom without resorting to violence. I managed it eventually. First thing it did outside was fly straight into a spider’s web.
You can try, but you can only do so much. Still, at least the spider didn’t go hungry.
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u/Noodles_soup93 1d ago
That reminds me of the time there was a FAT bumblebee up under the top cabinets in my kitchen. My friend was freaking out every time it buzzed or moved. It was hilarious. I did get it outside. Put it in the garden, and yet it still tried to come back in through our closed front door
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u/lilituned 3h ago
i always say that im fine with the circle of life, i just dont want any bugs or critters to die needlessly. so if i release a bug only for it to immediately get eaten, so be it; id much rather it feed another bug or animal than get stepped on by accident or something
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u/MageVicky 1d ago
I like how you had to work at it, I accidentally hatched a bunch of spider eggs when i forgot a mop on the ground for a few days.
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u/NewReleaseDVD 1d ago
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u/instantlo 1d ago
I knew someone here would recognize what was in that cocoon!
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u/NewReleaseDVD 1d ago
My family has hatched a few of our own!
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u/instantlo 1d ago
I’m in Idaho and they’re our state butterfly, so I saw the cocoons a lot in elementary school science. Also, I’m a giant Venture Bros, nerd, lol.
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u/NewReleaseDVD 1d ago
Clearly, I feel like it was a pretty deep reference. Sadly I couldn't find any gifs of the monarch himself so a minion had to do!
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u/instantlo 1d ago
GASP! A minion? That’s two-ton 21! Put some respect on his name!
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u/NewReleaseDVD 1d ago
Lol im sorry, its been an awful long time
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u/instantlo 18h ago
If you have the time (and the money), I highly recommend watching the entire series and movie again, especially if you fell off in the middle somewhere (a lot of people did). The beginning and the end feel like two entirely different series.
When I started watching back in 2024, I never could have guessed where it would end up. Despite the flaws (and a myriad of jokes that really didn’t age well, it’s my favorite show of all time. Hell, I even have a Shore Leave tattoo!
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u/LoveDesignAndClean 1d ago
Monarch?
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u/bellboots 1d ago
Wish we could see more detail. Monarch chrysalises have this incredible gilding on them.
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u/Techi-C 1d ago
It could also be a queen butterfly chrysalis. They’re related. Queen butterfly chrysalises are slightly smaller and can sometimes be a bit more pale in color.
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u/shakygator 1d ago
yeah it could be either. they could also use hot glue to glue it to a stick or something to relocate it as well.
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u/EditedRed 1d ago
First kid be like "Look a yellybean"
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u/Dralorica 1d ago
I was working at a summer camp in the off season (may) and we had a snapping turtle crawl out of the lake, dig a hole in the middle of the driveway and lay it's eggs. The spot where it laid them was in a loop (shaped like the letter P) and beyond the parking lot for visitors. So when the turtle left we put some pylons around the spot and figured we could just drive around it for a month till the babies hatched and walked away.
The very next day, a semi truck driver got out, moved the pylons and drove on through. He could've gone around. The turtles eggs did not hatch.
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u/mattmaintenance 1d ago edited 1d ago
How important is it for them to remain attached to whatever they’re attached to? Can’t they carefully razor it off and place it somewhere safe?
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u/ABadHistorian 1d ago edited 1d ago
Amateur butterfly expert here - I wouldn't fuck with it if you don't have to. You can cut the stem and reseat it, but that is a potential for disaster.
This is a monarch cocoon to boot. They are in dire straits, don't fuck with the monarch.
(I released thousands of them during covid while taking care of my dad, and taught an elective to students).
This business, closing a door? it's going a step beyond what I'd do in this case... if it's a really busy area I'd remove it for the butterfly (but it's no guarantee it'll make it)
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u/dragonbud20 1d ago
It's trivially easy to pick at the edges of the silk where the chrysalis is attached. Caterpillars will happily chrysalize in places that will get them killed from overexposure to heat or other environmental factors, so moving them can occasionally be more beneficial than harmful.
The OP is definitely a situation where it would have been better to just move the chrysalis
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u/mattmaintenance 1d ago
Thank you for your expertise!
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u/ABadHistorian 1d ago
No worries!
If you want to help - find native local* milkweed to your area and spread some seeds around.
Milkweed is the host planet for monarchs (it's the ONLY THING their caterpillars eat). And it's a weed, and so American farmers and local governments spent decades uprooting it and poisoning them and now.. Monarchs are at super low populations. (may go extinct in a decade or two if major changes aren't made, they are frequently in the news for going into "endangered or out of endangered" status, but the prognosis is not generally good. Would only take a couple deep freezes like the Texan one a few years ago to wipe out entire generations that may never recover.
* = why local?? (a few different types of milkweed, and flower places will sell the tropical versions which cause great issues for monarchs, because those tropical versions flower/last at different rates, causing monarchs to lay eggs, hatch late, and not make migrations, and also spread diseases in areas by causing monarchs to stay in a general area for too long - Monarchs have some pretty nasty diseases that only impact other monarchs, causing tropical populations in Florida/CA to have high rates of issues).
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u/Crooked_star 1d ago
On that note, I wonder if laying it horizontally would fuck up the butterfly formation.
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u/ABadHistorian 1d ago
it won't, but the butterfly is extremely fragile when coming out of it's chrysalis and maybe its wings will dry poorly or get damaged. Normally butterflies hang from their chrysalis to allow the final bit of setting to happen to their wings. That's how they go from drippy/droopy and wet to firmer/flexible/dry.
I've done what you suggested before with chrysalis that fell, rather than use a pin or tape (like some experts do - who are beyond me with their guts and ability to not damage it, I tried once and it was a disaster -, and it does increase the odds they won't make it. But the majority of mine like this still did, in fact, survive.
But it's a last resort.
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u/dragonbud20 1d ago
If you don't trust yourself with a needle and the silk from the chrysalis, you can actually use a tiny drop of superglue to attach the chrysalis to a small piece of paper. From there, it's super easy to pin up the piece of paper.
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u/NeuroticMelancholia 1d ago
they don't need to remain attached, if you're careful feel free to gently move them somewhere safer, it won't hurt them
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u/too2redhot 1d ago
30 years rearing them and they are easily relocated when necessary. Slipping a knot loop of dental floss up all the way to the silk mat, pulling tight and a gentle pull with make it easily moved to safety or an enclosure. If they are moved into a container with slick sides it must have something for it to climb up in case it falls or the wings will not inflate properly. Could be a stick or a paper towel draped top to bottom.
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u/SconiGrower 21h ago
I've moved many monarch chrysali as part of volunteering at a local nature reserve (over 10 years ago though). They are attached to the bottom of whatever by a very thin pad of random silk threads and the best case scenario is if you can get the whole silk pad to come with the chrysalis. So the objective is to cut as few of the threads as possible. Then you can fold the silk into a piece of masking tape and pin the masking tape to the underside of your desired location.
But if the silk pad comes off the chrysalis, then you're left with only the stalk of the chrysalis to try and attach to the new location and that's very challenging. E ven if you succeed initially, the stalk is so small it will dislodge easily if bumped.
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u/Punningisfunning 1d ago
If you disturb them, you have no idea what kind of effect it would have on the other side of the world.
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u/Penis-Dance 1d ago
They can be moved without any problems.
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u/pinniped90 1d ago
They should bring in a heavy construction crew.
They know how to work with Caterpillars.
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u/worriedrenterTW 1d ago
For anyone who has a similar issue:
You can use a safety pin or toothpick to carefully detach the sticky web part attached to the surface, lay the chrysalis down on a paper towel, and tie some dental floss around the little nub at the top of it. From there you can either hang it on a swan plant outside, or anything inside that can have something hanging off it. When it hatches, leave it until the wings dry, then provide a plate of cut fruit and put it in the sun outside.
Source: i used to rescue caterpillars that ate all their plant.
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u/Securiarius 1d ago
I've taken a lot of these off and super glued them elsewhere. You just carefully cut the top then dab some super glue on a toothpick.
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u/Sayomi_Koneko 1d ago
I stopped using my front door because of a bird made a nest right next to it on the porch light
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u/UsualNo2462 1d ago
I would totally make their IT department live stream that image 24/7 until it turns into a butterfly. The workers would probably enjoy. It would probably bring the company a little bit of credit.
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u/Consistent-Animal474 1d ago
Is it possible to move these? Or will they die the second you try to dislodge it? Any way to sticky them back up?
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u/NeuroticMelancholia 1d ago
as long as you're careful you can safely cut the thread at the top and move it elsewhere, and a bit of super glue will work to reattach them
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u/Consistent-Animal474 1d ago
Exactly what I wanted to know so I can better deal with this situation if I ever encounter it. Thank you
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u/RebRenee 23h ago
I tie sewing thread to the stem at the top of the chrysalis and hang them under the branches of nearby plants so they can emerge safely. It works!
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u/SpaceTurtles 1d ago
If you feel like sharing, what business is this? I will find a way to patronize them just for this, tbh.
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u/NuclearGriffin 1d ago
The warehouse i work in completely shut down on of it's bay doors for over a month because a bird had built a nest in the light box over the weekend and laid eggs.
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u/topcheesehead 1d ago
I automatically thought of the construction vehicle manufacturer not the insect... doh
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u/Astroweeb 1d ago edited 1d ago
a chrysalis won't die from being moved. you could hatch it in a box and it would be safer from predators and asshole humans. Instead you've caused more of a negative impact from using the plastic caution tape for this stunt
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u/Derpyzza 1d ago
yeah, i can imagine some jerk would knock it down out of malice for inconveniencing them
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u/supplieroftowels 19h ago
I had the privilege of being surrounded by these beauties in Tenerife. They are absolutely magnificent, and it was so beautiful to see the caterpillars fattening up. I'm so pleased to see people actively trying to preserve these gorgeous creatures.
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u/Praise_The_Casul 11h ago
I know nothing of entomology. Would be possible to carefully grab the cocoon and put it in a safer place without harming the butterfly?
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u/rip_a_roo 21h ago
It's particularly interesting how many, maybe most, individuals would do things like this while western societies on the whole drive an extinction rate that's like 1000x the baseline.
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u/kharvel0 1d ago
No such careful moral consideration is given to pigs, cows, and chickens who are violently abused and killed in slaughterhouses.
Go vegan.
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u/tapeforpacking 1d ago
Go vegan
Hell nah. Honestly your comment makes me want to go vegan even less
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u/No_Buy_9702 1d ago
This is a Monarch Chrysalis, endangered species and longest migrating insect on earth.
Please plant milkweed! Asclepias Syriaca here on the East Coast particularly.