What if becoming something new required you to completely fall apart first? Would you willingly dissolve into something unrecognizable to become something greater?
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Metamorphosis is one of the most dramatic transformations in nature. The most well-known example is the infamous caterpillar-to-butterfly transformation. First, a butterfly lays an egg from which the caterpillar hatches. This creature feeds well, then attaches itself to a plant where it can form a chrysalis (a phase called pupating). Inside a motionless shell, a body is being undone, cells breaking apart, structures collapsing. The tissues that made up the caterpillar are completely demolished to form a butterfly. Same DNA, but a different animal. Sounds unreal, doesn’t it? Yet this “rebirth” happens constantly in butterflies’ lifecycles. Now, let’s ask ourselves, what rebirth stands for? Is it creating something completely new, or is it possible to carry the past within the present? [1][2]
For the longest time, the assumption was that butterflies would not remember caterpillar life, as their brains are dissolved to get reformed. However, Jo Nagai, a 10-year-old kid with a passion for nature and bugs’ lives, discovered that this was not the case. He came to realize that the caterpillars he raised behaved differently around him, even after metamorphosis. He observed that they would behave as if they acknowledged him and stayed around him even when he tried to release them. This begged the question: Is it possible that butterflies remember their caterpillar lives? [3][4]
In his research, he got the caterpillars to associate an unpleasant smell with a bad experience. The idea was to see if they would carry their experience and their reaction to it to their butterfly lives. Interestingly, most of them went out of their way to avoid the smell even after the metamorphosis. That reaction suggests something incredible: that memories formed during the caterpillar stage can survive the transformation into a butterfly. Yet, something more incredible followed on his research. He wanted to see if the memory could be transmitted to the butterflies’ offspring. A journalist, Annie Rosenthal, wrote, “he did his experiment again, but tested a second generation too, to see if they avoided the same smell he’d trained their parents to hate. And a few months later (…) his butterflies had passed their memories on to their children”[4][5]
Even though butterflies don’t deliberately pass knowledge to their offspring the way humans do, this discovery suggests that experiences from one generation can still shape the next, an idea researchers study through epigenetics. Lastly, let’s ask ourselves one question to help us develop an educated thought train about what this discovery means for us: If experiences from ancestors influence our biology, what does this mean for personal responsibility and blame? And how should we rethink identity if environments epigenetically affect future generations?
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Hope you enjoyed the fascinating story of butterflies and metamorphosis. Watch the following videos for more information!
Resources:
[1]
American Museum of Natural History, “Butterfly Metamorphosis | American Museum Of Natural History,” American Museum of Natural History, 2020. Available: https://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/butterflies/metamorphosis
[2]
American Museum of Natural History, “The Butterfly Life Cycle,” YouTube, Sep. 20, 2017. Available: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVAEoPC_hUU. [Accessed: Feb. 14, 2026]
[3]
T. Mulligan, “Butterflies Remember Caterpillar Life,” www.youtube.com. Available: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/2_fwRkveUJs. [Accessed: Apr. 25, 2026]
[4]
“a curious birb,” Youtu.be, 2026. Available: https://youtu.be/nhESxrqPjfU?si=tzLeHkXOFyN_JUQd. [Accessed: Apr. 26, 2026]
[5]
“Child Prodigy Discovers Butterflies Remember Caterpillar Life, And Pass Down Memories To Offspring,” Sunny Skyz, 2026. Available: https://www.sunnyskyz.com/blog/4101/Child-Prodigy-Discovers-Butterflies-Remember-Caterpillar-Life-And-Pass-Down-Memories-To-Offspring
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