You won’t believe the amount of human inventions and ideas that
have been inspired by the natural world, with the so-called inventers taking
all the credit and failing to mention their critter counterparts. Some of these
include Velcro, the Japanese bullet train and windshield wipers.
But one that may not come to mind is that of the amazing and advanced science
of Cryogenics, from the creature Pyrrharctia
Isabella, or, you might call it a Moth.
During the Isabella Tiger Moths initial life stage, it’s known as
a Woolly Bear Caterpillar. Before caterpillars cocoon themselves to emerge as a
moth or butterfly, they must first eat enough to sustain themselves through the
transformation. The Woolly Bear Caterpillar lives in the Arctic and this is a barren
and difficult enough environment to live in for even the best adapted species, so
how does it consume enough to metamorphose before the freezing winter? Well, it
doesn’t. But don’t fret about impending death, the wonders of evolution have
figured out a way around it and this is where the cryogenics come in.
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| (Time lapse of Caterpillar freezing) |
When the
caterpillars can’t eat enough in one winter, they literally freeze themselves
solid for the four winter months and keep themselves alive by producing a
cryoprotectant, (a substance which protects living tissues from freezing damage
by altering bodily cells) and then thaw and continue to eat at the start of
spring. They’ll repeat this process year after year. But 14 years later in one
special spring, the Woolly Bear Caterpillar, now ready for metamorphosis, will
weave itself a silk cocoon and emerge from it as a beautifully yellow and black-spotted
Moth. They then have only few days to find a mating partner before they die and
the cycle starts again.
Other insects and amphibian species, such as Arctic frogs and
salamanders, will use cryoprotectants for similar reasons and it’s perhaps
these animals’ survival techniques which human cryogenics will be based on. It
may be a scary thought that we are putting our lives and futures in the hands
of these small and fairly unintelligent animals, but I for one trust evolution
more than the mind of man.
