Look at these delicate, beautiful, strikingly similar golden glittering earrings, are you already in love with it, eager to put it on the earlobe and go to the crowd to be beautiful?
But you have to be careful, this is not a hand-forged gold earrings, but a masterpiece of nature's ingenuity, inside it is a living little guy, is turning flesh into pulp, carrying out complex body restructuring work, and soon "falling" out of the "fall" into an extremely beautiful elf.
This elf is the Mechanitis polymnia, which translates as the orange spotted tiger butterfly and the different hymn goddess skirt butterfly, and the golden earrings are pupae formed by their larvae.
Inhabiting vast areas from Mexico to the Amazon rainforest, the orange tiger butterfly is 65 mm to 75 mm long and has a colorful body color, with 22 named subspecies, each with a different color and pattern, and there are considerable differences between individuals in various places.
But one thing is the same, that is, their larvae, that is, the caterpillar sea, eat the sea and drink almost the same, and they will begin to pupate, ready to enter the next stage of insect birth. They will first fully stretch their bodies, measuring whether there is enough space around them so that they will not be able to stretch their wings after feathering into butterflies - this is the most fatal, and will be said later.
After finding the right place, the old larvae will spit out silk to make a mat on the branches or leaf meridians, and then hook the mat with their tail feet, hang themselves upside down under the leaves, and constantly spit silk to the left and right, fixing themselves to form a pre-pupa.
After about a day, the old larvae begin to pupate, and the pre-pupa will intermittently expand and expand, and faster and faster, as if struggling, looking very painful. After that, its epidermis will split from the chest, be pushed upwards to the tail, and after falling, it will complete the pupal, gradually calming down and completely static, and the color will gradually turn into a beautiful golden yellow, that is, the metal-like object we see like earrings.
Don't you think it's amazing? Some rumors also say that these pupae contain gold and were even used as currency in ancient times. In fact, these glittering substances are only a layer of chitin, or chitin, which is a nitrogen-containing polysaccharide substance with the chemical formula (C8H13O5N)n, which is an important component of the carapace such as shrimp, crab, and insects, similar to the keratin that makes up the skin.
Although chitin is translucent and strong, easy to bend and elastic, very tough, but can be decomposed by enzymes into monosaccharides and ammonia, so when you eat shrimp and crabs, it is completely unnecessary to remove the shell, but wastes nutrients, because the enzymes in the human stomach can decompose it into the nutrients we need, of course, you can completely ignore these if you are more gold. Chitin actually has many applications, such as contact lenses, artificial skin, blood vessels, sutures, and can also promote wound healing.
The chitinous shell of the butterfly pupa has many colors, but the golden one is absolutely unique, and I don't know why the tiger butterfly evolved into a golden pupa, but certainly not for people to use to buy and sell things for money. Some argue that metal can reflect light of all colors, making the pupa look like a drop of water or other light source, and that predators such as birds will not recognize it as delicious food— which is stupid enough; others think that predators rushing to see a mirror image of themselves on the pupa shell will frighten the flowers and flee, thus protecting the butterfly pupae.
This is easier to understand, there used to be a peach tree in the yard where I lived, and the peaches that produced them were very delicious, and they were quickly targeted by birds and pecked. Later, I went to the Internet to check the information, how to prevent the birds from stealing, there are said that the birds can be driven away by windmills or anti-glorious belts, but the effect does not seem to be very large, and then I wrapped up one by one with paper, so that the birds had no way to do anything, and finally ate the sweet peaches.
Tiger butterfly in the golden pupa will stay for about a week to ten days, people once believed that the butterfly caterpillar will first become a pile of meat pulp inside, and then re-form a beautiful butterfly, but later people use X-ray, MAGNETIC resonance, tomography and other techniques, observe the activity inside the pupa, only to find that the reorganization process is extremely complicated. Most of the tissues of the larvae will indeed be dissociated and become the nutrients of new organs and new tissues, and the organ buds that already exist in the larvae will gradually split and differentiate, slowly forming the organs of adult insects, and the two are connected to each other and gradually replaced. This is also the reason why you accidentally step on a pupa, and many times you see only some slurry.
There are also some organs, such as the dorsal blood vessels, the central nervous system and the tracheal system, which are not dissociated and completely destroyed by tissues, but are directly involved in the corresponding organs that make up adult worms, and even the eyes of caterpillars will develop into the eyes of butterflies.
After that, it is feathered into a butterfly, and after the wings harden, it enters the most brilliant stage of the butterfly's life, embellishing nature, lighting our eyes, and then finding our other half in the dance, completing the exchange of genetic material, and starting the next round of life cycle.
And some butterflies that have just feathered out, because the caterpillar is not accurate in measuring before pupalizing, may cause it to be unable to spread its wings smoothly, and after the wings become hard, it cannot fly, at this time, you can only watch other butterflies flying, waiting for death alone, and there must be ten thousand horses galloping in your heart, roaring, cursing what your predecessor math class did. Other butterflies may fall to the ground for various reasons and lose the ability to fly forever.
Every species is a magical life history, and the more you look at it, the more you will find that life is simply amazing. The complete metamorphosis of butterflies from larvae to adults is really to make life come over again, and if we humans change, we can go through the stage of pupating butterflies, become angels that can fly, and freely ride between heaven and earth, if we can really do this, how good it would be. But first you have to completely stir into a pile of meat paste and then reorganize, too scary, or forget it.
One might ask, wow, it's so pretty, can this pair of gold earrings be worn? Nothing will happen when you put it on, right?
Of course, you can wear it, but you can only enjoy the beauty of a few days, and when the butterfly comes out, remember not to move, it will take a few hours to fly away with hard wings before you can turn your head, otherwise the butterfly will fall, and you will be pulling a debt.
Hey, the more beautiful it looks, the more I can't help myself, I want to have a pair.