Premium Only Content

Why Is The Very Hungry Caterpillar So Dang Hungry?
Because it's hoarding protein. Not just for itself, but for the butterfly it will become and every egg that butterfly will lay. And it's about to lose its mouth... as it wriggles out of its skin during metamorphosis.
DEEP LOOK is a ultra-HD (4K) short video series created by KQED San Francisco and presented by PBS Digital Studios. See the unseen at the very edge of our visible world. Get a new perspective on our place in the universe and meet extraordinary new friends. Explore big scientific mysteries by going incredibly small.
NEW VIDEOS EVERY OTHER TUESDAY! *
That caterpillar in your backyard is chewing through your best leaves for a good reason.
“Caterpillars have to store up incredible reserves of proteins,” said Carol Boggs, an ecologist at the University of South Carolina. “Nectar doesn’t have much protein. Most of the protein that goes to making eggs has to come from larval feeding.”
Caterpillars are the larval stage of a butterfly. Their complete transformation to pupa and then to butterfly is a strategy called holometaboly. Humans are in the minority among animals in that we don’t go through these very distinct, almost separate, lives. We start out as a smaller version of ourselves and grow bigger.
But from an evolutionary point of view, the way butterflies transform make sense.
“You have a larva that is an eating machine,” said Boggs. “It’s very well-suited to that. Then you’re turning it into a reproduction machine, the butterfly.”
Once it becomes a butterfly it will lose its mouth, grow a straw in its place and go on a liquid diet of sugary nectar and rotten fruit juices. Its main job will be to mate and lay eggs. Those eggs started to develop while it was a pupa, using protein that the caterpillar stored by gorging on leaves. We think of leaves as carbohydrates, but the nitrogen they contain makes them more than one quarter protein, said Boggs.
-- What are the stages of a butterfly?
Insects such as butterflies undergo a complete transformation, referred to by scientists as holometaboly. A holometabolous insect has a morphology in the juvenile state which is different from that in the adult and which undergoes a period of reorganization between the two, said Boggs. The four life stages are egg, larva (caterpillar), pupa (also known as chrysalis) and butterfly.
-- What if humans developed like butterflies?
“We’d go into a quiescent period when we developed different kind of eating organs and sensory organs,” said Boggs. “It would be as if we went into a pupa and developed straws as mouths and developed more elaborate morphology for smelling and developed wings. It brings up science fiction images.”
-
1:51:47
Steve-O's Wild Ride! Podcast
1 day ago $1.01 earnedBryan Johnson Helps Steve-O Rebuild His Body After Decades Of Abuse
5.19K3 -
LIVE
Pepkilla
2 hours agoYour favorite Asian ~
380 watching -
31:28
CatfishedOnline
15 hours agoWoman INSISTS Boyfriend Is Trapped Overseas Or Romance Scam?
8.03K6 -
LIVE
CassaiyanGaming
13 hours agoSaturday | Prince of Persia - 8am central
6,280 watching -
LIVE
Scottish Viking Gaming
1 hour ago💚Rumble :|: Saturday Special :|: I LOVE THIS RUMBLE SHIT!!
119 watching -
0:59
PewView
21 hours ago $4.39 earnedFound grandpas stash! 😂
12.6K4 -
LIVE
Shield_PR_Gaming
3 hours agoIt's Level Up Time! Bloodstrike and chatting
125 watching -
21:00
Clownfish TV
18 hours agoNPR and PBS are SCREWED! They're Getting DEFUNDED?!
9.64K28 -
34:44
LFA TV
4 days agoMIRACLES DO HAPPEN!
42K -
LIVE
Anvilight
3 hours agoLEGO Star Wars | Skywalker Saga Saturdays! | Creator Program Day #29
83 watching