Josh Clark

It starts to get really strange from there because the butterfly caterpillar, when it emerges from that fifth molt, it has a special kind of skin on it.

And over time, when it turns upside down and hangs from a leaf,

and begins its transformation.

That skin hardens, and it forms basically the protective layer that's going to protect that caterpillar-turned-butterfly as it undergoes its transformation.

And that's called a chrysalis.

But just butterfly caterpillars do that, right?

Not moths.

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?

Yeah, it's the outer layer of skin.

Yeah.

Right.

So imagine if you underwent this transformation.

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

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.

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

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

Right.

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.

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.

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