Listener Q's: Butterfly Goo

is from a friend of the show, Lydia Bug. She writes, I'm not sure if you've ever covered this in detail before, but I would love to hear more about the process of butterflies going from worm to pile of goo to pretty bug. So thanks, Lydia. The transformation from a butterfly to well known the other way, doesn't it. The transformation from a caterpillar to a butterfly is really fascinating and

a little disgusting. So caterpillars are butterfly larva. Their essential purpose is to eat as much as possible to get fat and to fuel the transformation into a butterfly. So caterpillars typically eat plant matter. Although large blue butterfly caterpillars eat meat, specifically ant larva, by tricking their way into ant nests. If you are curious to hear about these little carnivore caterpillars, we discuss this more detail on the

recent episode called Animal Lecter. So caterpillars will eat and eat and eat until they are all fueled up for their transformation. They will build a cocoon if they are a moth species, or a chrysalis if they are a butterfly species. So a cocoon is typically made out of silk that the moth has excreted. It is in fact where we get silk from via silk moths. So chrysalises are actually made out of the top layer of skin

of the caterpillar. So the caterpillar will attach itself to a branch via a bit of silk and then wiggle out of its top layer of skin, which hardens into a chrysalis. So inside the cocoon or the crysalis, the larva will actually completely dissolve into goo, so it is essentially digesting itself into a sort of soup ready to

be rearranged into its final form. So the way it does This is by preserving groups of blueprint cells called imaginal discs, which have DNA instructions for growing into body parts fueled and built by the dissolved soup that it turned its old body into. So is this a transformation or is it more of like a death and rebirth. So, after all, it has turned itself almost entirely into goop. Like if you cut open a cocoon or chrysalis at the right time, all you'll find is this zesty paste.

I guess I don't know if it's zesty because I've never tried it. Anyways, Researchers have found that adult moths can retain the memories of their former larval cells. So caterpillars were taught to fear an odor by pairing it with a mild electric shock. Then, after the caterpillars metamorphosized in two months, the researchers tested to see if they still feared the smell that they were trained to hate as caterpillars, and in fact, they found that they did so.

The theory is that some of the cells preserved during the sort of supefication that the larva goes through are actually neural cells that retain the same structures, or possibly there's some kind of epigenetic change that carries on into its adult form. Still, it's an incredibly weird process that I think we've just kind of grown up to think

it's normal because butterflies are everywhere. They're beautiful, innocent looking creatures, and we kind of don't think about how they turn themselves into goo and get reborn and are haunted by their old memories. Kind of a nightmarish ship of theseus situation. Onto the next listener question, what's going on with bees? We're terrified about them disappearing, but I haven't heard anything about them recently. This is from feminist Killjoy on Twitter. So bees, I love bees, I love honey, and I

love all the variety of bee species out there. I don't like getting stung by bees, but to be honest, it's only happened to me once, and that was my fault. I felt a bee land on my head, so I trying to like get whatever it was off my head, and the bee felt like I was attacking it and stungy entirely my bad. So bees. Starting around two thousand and seven, people started to freak out about colony collapse disorder which is the strange phenomenon where bees abandon a

colony and its queen. So it's become an increasing problem and the cause is mysterious, but it's thought to maybe have something to do with pesticides, pathogens, maybe parasites, or malnutrition or habitat loss. So this is an unfortunate phenomenon that has been occurring in domesticated honeybees. While there have been increased cases of colony collapse disorder, an important note is that honeybees are kind of like the cows of the insect world. We have selected honeybees for their increased

honey production and decreased aggression. They are not actually name to North America, and they are likely originally from Africa or Asia from tens of thousands of years ago when

we first started domesticating them. And so while I do love honey bees and I love honey, they are technically invasive species in many parts of the world, given that we have domesticated them, and they are only a small fraction of the number of bee species out in the world and a fraction of a fraction of the pollinators who help our crops and plants and planet. So I'm not saying that colony collapse disorder is not a problem.

I mean it is especially for beekeepers and if you like honey but there is a distinction between there being a problem with honeybees who are essentially tiny flying cows and their important agricultural pollinators as well as honey producers, but still their populations are probably gonna be fine. Meanwhile, we have we have problems that we are facing with wild native bees, who are both important pollinators for agriculture as well as for native plants, and their populations are

much more under threat. So firstly, honey bees are not endangered at the moment. Colony collapse disorder is alarming and very troublesome for apiari's and you know, if you like bees, but their populations are doing alright. I think it is important to find out why exactly colony collapse disorder is happening, because that is good information to know and that could be important for conservation for not just domesticated bees, but

for wild bees as well. But speaking of wild native bees, they are critical for protecting ecosystems and their populations are in far more danger than honey bees. So there are over three five hundred species of wild bees in North America, and they are much more likely to face extinction than the honey bee. Pollution, pesticides, light pollution, habitat destruction, all of these things really do threaten these native bee species. Uh So there is if you're interested right in the

health of native bees. There is a particularly adorable citizen science action you can take part in if you are concerned about wildbepopulations. Bumblebewatch dot org is where you can upload images of bumblebees that you found and the location and date to help conservationists keep track of bumblebee populations.

There are certain species of bumblebees who are endangered, such as the rusty patched bumblebee, and by providing photos as well as location and date information, you are giving researchers new locations to survey for possible bumblebee populations to keep track of. And honestly, who doesn't love watching bumblebees. They are easily one of my favorite types of bees. They are so fumbly and bumbly, just like their name implies. According to all known laws of aviation, there is no

way that a bumblebee should be able to fly. Its wings are too small to get its fat little body off the ground. The bumblebee, of course flies anyways. Okay, now that's actually just the first few lines of the famous movie be Movie starring Seinfeld. It's not actually scientifically accurate. Bumblebees as well as bees can certainly fly according to every law of aviation or aerodynamics and biology. They're just very around and very cute, and I love them. Next

listener question, how did birds develop hollow bones? Did their ancestors adapt that way before they flew or afterwards? According to the fossil records, and this is from L. S. Griegor, this is a great question. The short answer is that they did evolve before flight. These hollow bones evolved before flight. But to understand why, let's first talk about what we mean by hollow bones. Are they just tubes with nothing inside? So first let's talk about mammalian bones, like the bones

that we have in our body. Our mammalian bones are full of bone marrow. It is a tissue with blood vessels that produces red and white blood cells. Surrounding the bone marrow is a layer of spongy bone called cancelss bone, and layered over that is a tough outer layer of compact bone. So birds have bones that are not entirely hollow,

but are in fact full of air pockets. So imagine a really bubbly sour dough bread, you know, the kind that's really delicious, but you can't really make a sandwich out up because it's got too many holes in it. So the cross section of a bird bone looks almost exactly like that, with struts and air pockets inside. These are called pneumatized and they allow the bird's bones to

be lightweight and don't contain bone marrow. But if you think about it, this makes them actually very structurally stable, because if it was just a hollow tube, you could crush that quite easily. But because it's just full of sort of these bubbles and then these struts of bone, it is much more structurally stable. But birds do need bone marrow for blood cell production, so some of their bones are not entire are not hollow, and actually contain

bone marrow. In some species of birds, none of their bones are hollow, like all of their bones contain marrow, such as penguins or some diving birds like ox, who actually can fly. Penguins, of course can't fly. Ox can fly, but they can also swim. Some flightless birds like ostriches still have some hollow bones, such as their femurs. Even though these bones contain air pockets, the struts inside of the bones actually make them really strong, and that's how

they can support the ostrich's weight. Also, hollow bones are not just useful for flight, but also for thermoregulation, meaning keeping your temperature at a something that is suitable for you, as well as respiration, which sounds really weird. Why would bones help one breathe better? But we'll talk about that.

So hollow or maybe a more scientific term, pneumatized bones, are actually connected to the bird's respiration Systems have multiple air sacks in addition to their lungs, and these air sacks are connected to the bird's hollow bones and the bones. These hollow spaces and the bones can actually increase their

air intake capacity. So, given that pneumatized or hollow bones have multiple benefits outside of just helping with flying, it then makes more sense that these hollow bones evolved before flight, just as feathers had evolved before flight. So Alosaurus, which was a large t rex like dinosaur, had some hollow bones long before dinosaurs had any aspirations. Of flight. They had hollow bones along their neck, vertebrae, and back, and they were thought to help aid in respiration with that

handy extra air space. So like the dinosaur breathe in fill these air sacks, and then some of the air could be in these air pockets in the bone, increasing the volume of air that it could take in, which might be really important to give this dinosauran edge in terms of being able to chase after prey without having to catch its breath, or to just function as a large animal that needs a lot of oxygen. So evolution is a really amazing roller coaster ride with twists and turns.

Sometimes you start out with one adaptation that's for a specific purpose, but then it can later be used for an even more fantastic purpose like flight. Next listener question, what do you think of ancient folks mistaking elephants spools for monsters and coming up with stories of the cyclops? I always thought that was neat. Do you have a favorite? This real animal was probably the inspiration for this mythical beast sort of thing from Blake Rogers. So I love

this story. I have I seen an elephant skull in a museum. I actually remember thinking exactly that it looks like a cyclops skull. The hole that looks like an eye socket is actually its large nasal cavity that it's trunk connects to. But it's so huge, and it really does look like a big hole for an eye. The actual eye sockets are really small and they're harder to notice. So it makes sense that we would see this one big hole and think, oh, this is where a giant

eye would go on this giant skull. So I can see that Greek sailors might think this was a monster that wanted to eat them. But I have many favorite kind of like oopsies, we got this animal wrong, or like taking a part of another animal or real animal and thinking that it was a monster or a mythical creature.

So one example of a bonar reconstruction go terribly wrong is the Mageburg unicorn, which was made in the seventeenth century and Feach is featured at the Museum for Netrikunde Maigeburg, Germany. I'm I'm really sorry Germany if I'm pronouncing Mageburg wrong. Maybe it's Magburg anyways, So this reconstruction has a long tail, two legs, no arms, and a skull with a giant horn on its forehead. It is the goofiest looking fossil

recreation ever made, just like Google Mageburg unicorn. It's amazing. Yeah, I can imagine that this was probably made by someone like after eating ergot infested bread, huffing mercury laden makeup. I don't know, it doesn't it makes no sense. It has the skull of an actual wooly rhino, which was a real animal that is extinct. It has the horn of a narwalal, So the horn of a narwall is act actually a tusk. It's a long tooth, not a horn,

and it has the legs of a wooly mammoth. So three unfortunate dead animals who did not deserve to be so disrespected. So, speaking of narwal teeth, that long pointed tooth that has been mistaken for horns, which you know, it's easy to see why that mistake is made. It's something that's coming out of the Narwal's head. It does not look like a long tooth or a tusk. These tusks were often thought to be unicorn horns. Before the eighteenth century. These unicorn horns were sold to royalty because

of their supposed jurative properties. They would shave off small pieces of the horns and mix them with drinks or use them to protect themselves against being poisoned. So there's no science to Narwal tusks being useful to prevent poisonings. So please don't just try to like chew on a Narwald tusk to cure yourself after you ate some urga and huff some mercury. But you know, Europeans had no idea, and Narwal tusks came from traders who were only too

happy to capitalize on their mystical reputation. So that'll do it for our quick little listener questions episode no animal sound of the week. I will save that for next week when I have a guest, but just a refresher for last week's mystery animal sound. The hint was that this is a bird who is often plagiarized, and here is the sound. So if you think you know who is making that sound, you can write to me at

Creature feature Pod at gmail dot com. You can also write to me your questions and I will try my best to answer them either through email or on the show like I did this time. Thank you guys so much, for listening. If you're enjoying the show and you leave a rating or review, I read all of them and I appreciate every rating. It really does help me out, helps the show out, and makes me feel good. And thank you to the Space Cossics for their super awesome song. Exolumina.

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