Metamorphosis Metamorphoses in Nature
Uploaded by allupinu69 on Oct 31, 2011
This essay examines the changes throughout the life cycle of flowers, frogs and butterflies.
I Introduction
These papers overall consider the themes of pregnancy and the changes in a woman’s body, and the metamorphosis of living things. Pregnancy, in one sense, is such a metamorphosis: the woman’s body is the cocoon from which new life emerges. Let’s explore the changes in insects, frogs and flowers as examples of metamorphoses in nature.
II Discussion
Metamorphoses in nature are amazing: caterpillars become butterflies; tadpoles become frogs; and seeds become flowers. These changes are amazing, for they involve not only rapid growth, but complete transformations from one physical form to another.
When trying to describe the cycles of nature, there’s no real way to determine a starting point. But since it seems logical, we’ll look at the butterfly’s life cycle as beginning with the egg. The eggs are laid by the female on the appropriate plant, in and about five days a tiny wormlike caterpillar hatches.
The caterpillar immediately begins eating the plant food on which it has hatched; it also sheds its skin, usually four times, a process called ecdysis, The caterpillar at this point is transformed into a creature called a pupa, which spins a cocoon for the final transformation.
The cocoon may seem lifeless, but inside the caterpillar is in the process of becoming a butterfly. The caterpillar literally liquefies and is reassembled into one of the most gorgeous creatures in nature. The four stages are quite distinct: egg, caterpillar, pupa, butterfly. In each, the insect eats different foods and has a distinctly different appearance. (“The Amazing Life Cycle of the Butterfly,” PG).
This process is entirely dissimilar from that of mammals, where one knows a kitten will become a cat; a puppy a dog; and a baby a human. Here, there is no corresponding physical resemblance between the developmental stages.
The same type of oddly dissimilar physical stages occurs in the development of frogs. Frogs are amphibians, a class of animal that spends part of its time in the water and part on land. Like butterflies, frogs lay eggs, only the female lays the in the water. When they hatch, the tiny creatures are known as tadpoles, and they breathe through gills as fish do. As the tadpoles mature, they grow legs, and begin to develop lungs...