National Geographic recently had this article about experiments showing that moths can remember some lessons that they learned while they were caterpillars. The whole of metamorphosis is amazing, weird and interesting, but this is a question that didn’t even occur to me.
Anyway, it turns out that a caterpillar brain gets completely reorganized during metamorphosis, but a small part does remain intact – “the brain is not completely taken apart and rebuilt from scratch”
The experiment involved teaching caterpillars to avoid a certain smell and then checking if they remembered the lesson as adults – which they did.
Not sure why I find this interesting, but it’s the kind of random fact that appeals to me…
