Original link: http://huiweishijie.com/blog/2023/03/14/caterpillars/
change of information source
Recently, I slowly began to convert my information source to English, mainly with the help of some plug-ins, which allow me to read bilingually. With the help of chatGPT, I feel that the English world is slowly opening to me.
association of immortality
This time I read “The Little-Known World of Caterpillars” by The New Yorker. Before reading this article, I knew nothing about caterpillars. I always felt that they were so disgusting and scary. But after reading it, my understanding changed. It also made me think of a question: Butterflies are the new bodies of caterpillars after metamorphosis. Does this mean that human beings can also make “immortality” a possibility in the future? After all, studies have shown that butterflies have memories of caterpillars.
What I didn’t expect was that someone on Zhihu also asked a similar question , but the focus of this question was whether butterflies have their own memories of caterpillars. The answer there is that there is no memory of the past. I don’t agree with it, because now Zhihu’s Zhihu is basically unbelievable, so let’s have fun with the answers there!
Here’s what this New Yorker article says about the memory problems of caterpillars after they turn into butterflies:
“After running through its allotment of instars, a caterpillar ceases to be itself and becomes a pupa. It sheds its skin one last time and develops a hardened shell. Inside this shell, its body dissolves. Then, from bundles of cells known as imaginal disks, a new body takes form. Some disks develop into legs, some wings, some genitalia, and so on. The creature that emerges retains almost nothing of its juvenile self except, weirdly, its memories.”
To sum up, as an old-fashioned news platform, this article is likely to be a relatively new research content. That is, “the butterfly remembers that it was once a caterpillar”.
Life is really wonderful! This radical, systemic transformation is an ancient way of life that arose during the Carboniferous period some 350 million years ago, and we are only a few million years old compared to human history. And judging from the article, not only butterflies undergo complete metamorphosis, but also beetles, flies, wasps, fleas, and mayflies. So far, it’s been fun!
Caterpillar specimen collection and production
“The Little-Known World of Caterpillars” talks about following the 66-year-old entomologist’s scientific research life, collecting specimens, seminars, the latest insect situation and protecting insects. But I find the collection and production of caterpillar specimens interesting. I roughly classify them into two methods, early death and late death. The early death method is to inject alcohol into the caterpillars for euthanasia. The collection process is easy. To die late is to put it in a bottle and carefully take care of it for a few days, and then make slices to analyze the genes to see if it is a new variety or something. In short, it will die.
The details about the collection mentioned in the article are very interesting. All the collected creatures will be recorded to find the exact location and the kind of plant they grew on. Finally, they will be photographed, because the caterpillars cannot be kept for a long time, even if they are soaked in alcohol , they get wet and discolored over time, but if not soaked, they will rot, and the only way to preserve them is to take pictures. And for the photoshoot, the caterpillar had to look at the camera because “eye contact is very important.” The original sentence is this:
“Eye contact is critical,” he told me. “People are going to connect to that.”
Current status of insects
“Insects appear to be declining globally, in ways we are only beginning to understand,”
Results from the 2013 survey showed that the insect population was three-quarters smaller than it was in 1989, a fraction of what it was then, and some beetle families had disappeared entirely. The loss of insect-eating species is even greater, which means that the food chain is starting to collapse…
We’ve only just learned a little about insects, and their populations are already in rapid decline globally. It’s no wonder that Ye Wenjie in Liu Cixin’s novel “The Three-Body Problem” came up with the idea of ”destroying human beings and saving the earth” after reading “Silent Spring”.
Summarize
It is recommended to read the original text, very interesting article, quote the original sentence “The more you know, the more fun this is ” The more you know, the more interesting it is.
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