Histolysis

I found myself talking with an old friend today, one Doug Foster, and somehow we ended up on the subject of histolysis. For those of you who don't know what that is (and don't feel guilty, I didn't either until moments ago when I looked up the scientific term for this process,) it is essentially the act of an organism digesting itself from the inside out. Sounds horrifying, right? Well, this is a stage in a process we all know, that of metamorphosis in insects, particularly moths and butterflies. This is what happens once inside that cocoon; the creature literally digests itself. Most of the old tissue is destroyed, varying in degrees within species, but in some nearly all of the old tissue is destroyed, then reformed into the adult organism- be it a butterfly or a moth. This in and of itself is fascinating- it blows my mind. It doesn't by any means go against evolution, but intuitively the whole process seems absurd. Doug pointed out that the late philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, speaking of evolution, pointed out that nature isn't really all competition and survival of the fittest- though competition seems to fuel much of evolution, there is a lot of time for organisms to be lazy, for nature to be extravagant. Histolysis seems to be a prime example.
But that isn't what I find most remarkable, most unbelievable about the whole process. What is absolutely shocking is that scientists have recently discovered that butterflies and moths can actually RETAIN MEMORY from the larvae stage- that despite much of the brain being DIGESTED, and drastically reorganized, somehow those memories survive.
Here's what they did; while in caterpillar form, the scientists used mild shock therapy to associate shocks with a very potent smell; a smell that originally wasn't avoided by the caterpillar, so that new behavior could be learned; ie, the caterpillars learned to hate the smell that kept shocking them, so they consistently avoided it.
Once the conditioning had set in, the caterpillars were allowed to begin metamorphosis, and once out, the resulting butterflies kept their conditioning- they avoided the smell!
This blows me away- it seems like such an alien thing. I can't help but imagine a larger organism going through the same process. Picture a cow wrapping itself up and then digesting itself, turning into a totally different organism, yet somehow retaining memories- ABSURD!

Here's a link to a story on the subject

http://www.scientificblogging.com/news_releases/study_butterfy_memory_can_recall_uglier_caterpillar_days