the.com/pupa
the body literally dissolving into goo to rebuild itself from scratch, on purpose.
means The intermediate, often immobile and encased life stage of an insect, during which it transforms from larva into adult.
from Straight from Latin pupa, meaning 'girl' or 'doll' — the same root that gives us 'puppet' and 'pupil' (the little doll-image of yourself you see reflected in someone's eye). The naming was Linnaeus's doing in the 18th century: he saw the swaddled, doll-like stillness of the chrysalis and called it a little doll, never mind the riot of dissolution happening inside.
- inner soup
- Insides liquefy into cellular slush before reassembling
- memory kept
- Moths recall lessons learned as caterpillars
- imaginal discs
- Hidden cell clusters blueprint the future adult
- chrysalis vs cocoon
- Butterflies make the former, moths spin the latter
- diapause
- Some pupae pause development for years, waiting
monarch butterfly pupa — chrysalis of danaus plexippus that migrates 3,000 miles annually between mexico and canada
mosquito pupa — comma-shaped aquatic stage of culicidae that breathes through trumpet-like siphons
silkworm pupa — bombyx mori cocoon stage in china producing 80,000 tons of silk annually