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A Japanese boy noticed his butterflies seemed to recognize him. He spent two years making an experiment and proved that metamorphosis does not remove memories made during the caterpillar stage. (europe.pub)
submitted 4 days ago by to c/interestingasfuck@lemmy.world
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[–] -4 points 4 days ago (8 children)
  1. Why would it? Just because it looks different? It's still the same individual. It's not like dying and getting reborn.
  2. Losing its memories without any reason wouldn't make any sense evolutionary.
  3. Isn't the crazy part that insects have memories at all and even are able to remember a certain human being.
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  • [–] 38 points 4 days ago (2 children)

    I think it's that they become ooze at one stage part.

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  • [–] 20 points 4 days ago (1 child)

    When the caterpillar goes into its cocoon, it basically liquifies itself into a soup, including the nervous system. So for a while scientists didn't know how much of the old caterpillar really remained in the new butterfly, or if it was essentially killing itself and birthing a new organism from the goop.

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  • [–] 15 points 4 days ago

    Unfortunately for the common misunderstanding, "basically" is doing too much heavy lifting there. Most of their cells are replaced or reconfigured during metamorphosis but the central nervous system is not reduced to an unconnected paste. Linking an ancient Reddit thread for an overview and terms to chase down if you're curious. https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/mpqu2/what_happens_to_a_caterpillars_brain_during/c32x1pc/

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  • [–] 7 points 4 days ago

    I mean, that's science, innit? You form a reasonable hypothesis and then ruthlessly attack it.

    I think it'd be perfectly reasonable to ask why a butterfly needs to remember anything at all about what it did as a caterpillar. It likely has a completely different diet (maybe it doesn't eat at all), it sees the world from a very different perspective, it is orders of magnitude faster, it has all that mating shit to figure out...

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