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Josh Clark

๐Ÿ‘ค Speaker
33108 total appearances

Appearances Over Time

Podcast Appearances

Stuff You Should Know
Caterpillars: Nature's Magicians

And then I think it's just moths, because they don't form chrysalis or chrysalis, they are the only ones to spin a cocoon to protect themselves, correct?

Stuff You Should Know
Caterpillars: Nature's Magicians

Yeah, it's the outer layer of skin.

Stuff You Should Know
Caterpillars: Nature's Magicians

So imagine if you underwent this transformation.

Stuff You Should Know
Caterpillars: Nature's Magicians

You would probably go off into a corner and kind of ball up, maybe in a bit of a fetal position.

Stuff You Should Know
Caterpillars: Nature's Magicians

But then imagine as part of this process, all of your skin fused together and turned into like an outer shell rather than this thing covering you.

Stuff You Should Know
Caterpillars: Nature's Magicians

It's like now this big ball that you're now kind of separated from inside and you're doing your thing inside.

Stuff You Should Know
Caterpillars: Nature's Magicians

That's kind of like what the chrysalis is like.

Stuff You Should Know
Caterpillars: Nature's Magicians

And then so once that happens, once the cocoon is full or the chrysalis is hardened, one of the most amazing things on Earth happens in there.

Stuff You Should Know
Caterpillars: Nature's Magicians

And it's neat because we've gotten to the point where we have photography that can peer inside of this without harming the caterpillar.

Stuff You Should Know
Caterpillars: Nature's Magicians

And they have like time-lapse videos of this transformation.

Stuff You Should Know
Caterpillars: Nature's Magicians

And as the thing turns more and more into what's obviously like a butterfly or a moth, and you see it hanging upside down, just forming, it looks like a cross between an H.R.

Stuff You Should Know
Caterpillars: Nature's Magicians

Giger painting and Michael Crichton's coma, the movie version.

Stuff You Should Know
Caterpillars: Nature's Magicians

It's really neat, but it also gives you this, it has this kind of regal and majestic feel to it as well.

Stuff You Should Know
Caterpillars: Nature's Magicians

It produced a lot of emotions in me, apparently.

Stuff You Should Know
Caterpillars: Nature's Magicians

Like, how did that even happen?

Stuff You Should Know
Caterpillars: Nature's Magicians

So this is how it happens.

Stuff You Should Know
Caterpillars: Nature's Magicians

The caterpillar breaks itself down into a soup of cells.