Butterflies were probably the first animal I ever learned to draw. I don’t remember exactly when I was taught that these ethereal, winged creatures are the same animal as creepy, crawly caterpillars - perhaps it was when I read The Very Hungry Caterpillar for the first time. I know that caterpillars retreat into their chrysalis and emerge to flutter away entirely changed, and that we have metamorphosis to thank for that. But I couldn’t tell you about how that transformation actually happens, or why.
Have you ever wished you could peer inside the chrysalis to understand what goes on inside? Is it true that caterpillars become a soupy mush? And, if so, how on Earth do they re-form into a majestic adult butterfly?
What is metamorphosis?
For answers to your childhood wonderings, we called in the experts.
Darrell Kemp, an associate professor in biology at Macquarie University in Sydney, explains that metamorphosis is a change in body form, or morphology, which happens during the lifetime of an animal.
“We see it in insects, obviously, but it also occurs in crustaceans, and echinoderms like starfish,” he says. “We see it in the cnidarians, which is the group of animals that includes the jellyfish, and fish undergo metamor phosis as well. And obviously amphibians – the tadpole into the frog is a classic metamorphosis in a vertebrate animal.”
But not all metamorphoseschange of body plan (complete metamorphosis, or holometabolism), while changes are a bit more subtle in others (incomplete metamorphosis, or hemimetabolism).
