Poop shaped Butterfly Caterpillar

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Breaking News, 8th January, 2022

Poop shaped Butterfly Caterpillar :innocent:

@Seethalaxmi and @Sara from Kerala have found butterfly Pupae which look like bird poop shaped, we had a wonderful discussion on how is it possible? Is it an adaptation?

We came up with an analogy of Industrial Revolution times in Europe where black coloured moth’s were selected based on smoke pollution of factories.
Here also same type of natural selection is taking place, where Pupae later change to green color to match with leaves.

Komal Singh from Bilaspur raised a question if it is a camouflage by seeing the external environment (like in case of chameleon) or an inbuilt mutation?

Komal Singh also asked how can we use Butterflies model to teach school students, where I said we can use Butterflies model to teach topic of Evolution and Natural Selection to school students.
We need to discuss in detail about it and come up with Pedagogy Content Knowledge around the topic of Evolution using Butterflies model.

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Do you mean to say, there were Common mormon butterflies with slightly varied shapes and colors of caterpillars. But, the ones escaped predations were the ones looking like bird poop.
Those caterpillars when developed into adult butterflies were laying eggs exclusively looking like bird poop.
Hence, we have only Common Mormon butterflies whose caterpillars look like bird poops, exclusively, with no obvious variation.
Do you suggest this? @jaikishan

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@Arunan if we keep rearing butterflies in an environment with red leaves, will we get butterfly caterpillars and pupae looking red in color after several generations due to natural selection?

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What is the basis for this? @jaikishan