Metamorphosis

When you think metamorphosis, you might think a beautiful butterfly coming out of its cocoon. However, lots of things metamorphose in much less graceful, much more sticky, gooey, unsettling, and potentially dangerous ways!

Follow us on Twitter @SciShowTangents, where we’ll tweet out topics for upcoming episodes and you can ask the science couch questions! 

If you want to learn more about any of our main topics, check out these links: 

[Truth or Fail]

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-01/uoc-sbb010308.php http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4460030.stm

Kind of gross but very cool, highly recommend this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCo2uCLXvhk

[Fact Off]

Cryptometamorphosis:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/11/science/snail-metamorphosis.html

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rspb.2018.1099#sec-3

Figure from paper: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/cms/attachment/12748a2e-c968-4fff-912a-9f9cd2c3d514/rspb20181099f01.gif

Wax moths and plastic:

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/04/25/525447206/a-worm-may-hold-the-key-to-biodegrading-plastic

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28441558

[Ask the Science Couch]

Grasshoppers/locusts:

http://mentalfloss.com/article/57104/whats-difference-between-grasshoppers-and-locusts

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/when-grasshoppers-go-bibl/

(includes picture) https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2009/01/serotonin-makes-locusts-swarm

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/306/5703/1881