99% is pretty impressive, most species have 100% mortality rate
That’s an interesting point!
Any animal that changes or metamorphosises into a different animal technically has a less than 100% mortality rate
Hmm, interesting indeed! I get what you’re trying to say, but I would also tend to believe that it’s still the same animal? If not that, then wouldn’t the caterpillar cease to exist when it metamorphosised into something else?
I would also lean closer towards ‘same animal’ but its physical morphology undergoes such drastic changes its definitely blurred lines
Psychologically I think there are tests that show butterflies and moths retain memories from pre-metamorphisis stages
Metaphysical questions are so cool just because we may never be able to answer them!!!
“Caterpillar” is not a species. It’s a stage of some animals’ life cycle. It means 99% of catepillars die before they become butterflies or moths or whatever
The problem is they they’re just designed to eat and get chonky. If they had invested in cool ninja combat during evolution, scientists believe they would be not only more likely to survive, but be a lot cooler.
sometimes i wonder if life is sort of designed to be like that though. not in a strictly intentional intelligent way but also not in a fully accidental coincidental way.
somebody has to turn plant into food right? without them and homies like them our food system don’t work.
It’s designed that way in the same way as a hole was designed for a puddle*. The caterpillars are evolutionarily successful because of a “spray and pray” strategy, and other species are successful because of the easy food.
Biology is an arms race, in a sense: so everything is interlinked, and affected by everything else, even if only by distant, myriad links in an unbroken web of chains. It’s the reason a lot of biologists like myself are anxious about the ecological destruction that’s been unfolding for so long. Life finds a way in the long term, but short term…it sucks to be alive when many of the things you depend on aren’t.
*This metaphor thanks to Douglas Adams
I thought hotdogs were nature’s hotdogs.
Has anyone run them through HotDogNotHotDog app analysis? Maybe they’re not just nature’s hotdogs, and we’re missing out.
