More to the hungry caterpillar than meets the eye

We all know the story - the very hungry caterpillar eats and eats and eats and gets fatter and fatter until he turns into a beautiful butterfly.

I've always loved that story - as a kid it's a fun story. But as an adult - it's the phrase "turns into a butterfly" that gets me every time.

Just like that - caterpillar goes off munching, fully formed, fully active, fully aware and then goes into a cocoon and its whole body literally breaks down into a very technical 'gloop'. And then... this sort of biological magic happens, and it forms itself into a butterfly! Just like that.

Some scientists would have you believe with the aid of their "proof" and scientific "fact" that there is a clear biological link between the two phases of its life. But there are two theories I have always loved:

1. Caterpillars are born with a butterfly already inside it.

Sort of a symbiotic / parasitic relationship, where one the caterpillar has lived its life, th butterfly gestates and emerges.

2. Donald Williamson's theory that a caterpillar and butterfly are descended from accidental interspecies sex.

hmm... Apparently one day Mr Velvet Worm was doing the dirty deed with Mrs Velvet Worm (they apparently drop the little velvet sperms on the skin of Mrs V and they are absorbed through the skin...), when A N Other female insect came along and accidentally collected this little bundle of man milk and got fertilized. The end result being a new species which lives half its life as one creature, and the other half as another!

Bless him, he is (or would be) 90 years old and it took him 22 years to get his theory published in a journal....

Good effort Mr Williamson, but I'm not sure your theory will really make good reading for kids!