Nothing Inside

There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it’s going to be a butterfly.

R. Buckminster Fuller

Per the Learn About Nature site’s article “Caterpillar Life Cycle – Common Habits & Stages of Development ”, “there are four phases in the entire metamorphosis process for butterflies and moths: the egg, the larva, also referred to as a caterpillar, the pupa, and the adult stages.” That’s pretty common knowledge, yes? The details of each stage can be fascinating, such as this factoid from the egg stage: “Most caterpillars eat eggshells as their first meal. During the process, the caterpillar will multiply its body mass thousands of times before starting to pupate.” Oh, and “caterpillars contain 4,000 muscles, compared to the human body’s 629 muscles. A single or two neurons are connected to each muscle.” Neat.

About the author

Richard Buckminster Fuller Jr. (July 12, 1895 – July 1, 1983) was an American architect, systems theorist, writer, designer, inventor, philosopher, and futurist. He styled his name as R. Buckminster Fuller in his writings, publishing more than 30 books and coining or popularizing such terms as “Spaceship Earth”, “Dymaxion” (e.g., Dymaxion house, Dymaxion car, Dymaxion map), “ephemeralization”, “synergetics”, and “tensegrity”.