To this class belong all the diverse instincts by which insects
protect themselves against attack during the pupa stage. Even the way
in which the caterpillars of many diurnal butterflies hang themselves
up in pupation is not by any means a very simple instinctive action.
The caterpillar first spins, in a suitable place, a small round disk
of silk threads, to which it then attaches the posterior end of its
body, so securely that it cannot be easily torn away. More complicated
still is the securing of the pupa when it does not hang freely, but
is to remain pressed against a wall or a tree, as is the case in the
Papilionidæ and the Pieridæ. In this case the caterpillar must, in
addition to the usual cradle, spin a thread of silk, in an ingenious
way, diagonally across the thorax, so that it may cross about the
middle of the wing rudiments, and not be too loose, lest the pupa fall
out, yet not too tight, lest the thread cut too deeply into the wing
rudiments and hinder their development. When one remembers that it is
the caterpillar that does all this, before it has taken the form of the
pupa, and that it must all be adapted to the pupa's form, we are amazed
at the extraordinary exactness with which instinct prescribes all the
individual movements which make the whole of the complex performance
effective. And yet, as each caterpillar only accomplishes this
performance once in its life, it could at no time in the development
of the species have become a habit in the case of any individual
caterpillar, and it cannot therefore be an 'inherited habit.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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