I have always been mesmerised by how function is central to body design and behaviour of all living creatures. Take the case of the salmon Arab butterfly caterpillar.
Butterflies almost invariably lay their eggs on specific ‘host plants’ so the larvae that emerge from the eggs are able to fulfil their singular purpose in life… to eat! The first meal tends to be the eggshell… then the leaf on which the egg was carefully laid. Caterpillars could consume 25,000 times their original body weight, moulting several times before metamorphosing into the next stage of their life cycle. I have edited Sanctuary for 38 years now, but am still frustrated by how little I know. Did you know that caterpillars possess as many as 4,000 muscles? You have just 629 and they have 248 muscles in their head capsules alone!
Though they can’t see very well at all, they actually have six times as many eyes as you do. And no, they do not have a large number of legs. They are insects and have just six. Their other appendages that look like legs are ‘prolegs’ that help them hold on to plants for dear life! When they turn into butterflies, all but the six legs attached to their thoracic segments will drop off.
With no weapons to defend themselves, these soft-bodied creatures pack impressive arsenal to ward off predators. Some steal poisons from host plants to deter birds and other insects and, you better believe it, some adjust their blood pressure to assist in locomotion.
Nature’s many wonders
When I see a frog, beetle, or skink that has found a spot on this planet to call its own, I am overcome with gratitude and gobsmacked with wonder. How can things be so utterly beautiful and so miraculously functional all at once?
The sheathed woodtuft mushrooms, for example, offer frogs temporary refuge. The partnership is ancient. Fungi possibly emerged on Earth some 1,300 million years ago. Plants 600 million years later. Frogs had to wait another 300 million years (give or take a few million) before males could serenade potential amphibian mates. Fungi hence laid the foundation for plants and, working together, both accidentally helped craft a biosphere able to support myriad lifeforms.
Even as a child I hated it when questions cropped up in my head to which I knew no answers could emerge. How many stars are there in the sky and where does the universe end? How did life on Earth begin? As I grew older, the questions became more complex, but continued flowing. How come dirty water evaporates and falls as rain we can safely drink? How does one skin cell know precisely how to unite with another to heal a wound? Darwin, Gould, Wilson and Dawkins opened door after door for me, only to have 10 more doors materialise for each one that opened.
To me all this is pure magic. It’s mystical. And it’s wonderful beyond comprehension. I feel lucky to be alive. When I am alone, far from civilisation, in the quiet of a forest, desert, or uninhabited island, I like to pretend I am an early human, gazing in wonder and amazement at the sun, moon and stars. But they did not have even the rudimentary benefits of science to explain the obscurities of outer or inner space… so surely their wonder must have been more wondrous, I imagine.
Back in the city I wonder about different things. When did human experience turn into knowledge… and knowledge into science? What possessed the system to gift us the ability to think abstract thoughts? What does it mean for a frog and for us all that Homo sapiens has launched the Anthropocene, where we have become the agents of geological and ecological change?
How does all this magic happen? Your guess is as good as mine. But this I know… Dr. Richard Dawkins got it right when he said: “The truth is more magical – in the best and most exciting sense of the word – than any myth or made-up mystery or miracle. Science has its own magic: the magic of reality.”
The next time you visit a distant wilderness, remember the wild exists right next to you, in your home, in your gardens… even in your gut!
As Louis Armstrong exclaimed… long before Dawkins: “What a wonderful world!”
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Bittu Sahgal
Bittu Sahgal is the Editor of Sanctuary Asia www.sanctuaryasia.com, a publication of The Sanctuary Nature Foundation.[/column]