@sepiata

Why Butterflies Remember Being Caterpillars When a caterpillar turns into a butterfly, its body is almost completely rebuilt. Most of its tissues dissolve into a kind of biological soup before forming a new body. But here’s the strange part studies show that butterflies can remember things they learned as caterpillars. Experiments found that if a caterpillar learns to associate a smell with danger, the butterfly will still avoid that smell after metamorphosis. This means memory can survive one of the most extreme transformations in nature. A brain that melts a body that changes completely but memories that stay. Nature doesn’t reset as much as we think.

3 replies

12 recasts

15 reactions