C'mon Baby, Do the Locomotion~

Ever watch one of those cheesy western movies or went to a costume party with a horse where the was something very odd about the horse, but you couldn't seem to put your foot on it? And while your watching the movie or walking around at the masquerade you can't help but notice how the horse very peculiar the horse walks. Well, I hate to spoil your movie but it's actually TWO PEOPLE! The crawling Tobacco Hawkmoth Caterpillar (Manduca Sexta) operates in a similar way. No two people aren't in a caterpillar! Different points of its gut moved at at different speeds. Caterpillars have an internal tissue movement that causes it to propel itself with a two-body system. The wall container and the gut moves separately, with the gut moving almost a whole step ahead. The gut was a tube suspended in the head and rear that was detached from the body wall, thus their separate movements.

The biologists at Tufts University's School of Arts and Sciences seemed to have thought this had plenty to do with biology. They were granted funds by the National Science Foundation. Anyways, this is very important to biology because the Tobacco Hawkmoth Caterpillar has the extraordinary freedom of movement with two independent locomotion. The way cells send signals to the central nervous system has been extensively studied by many scientists. This discovery about the Hawkmoth Caterpillars could be the beginning of a phenomenon that might give caterpillars an evolutionary advantage such as the synchronized breathing and tissue movement of running vertebrates.

This is important because this is perhaps another advantage developed by animals to adapt to predation and other limiting factors. This research on caterpillars could give away to a whole different perspective on the adaptations some organisms go through to reach an advantage over others. This may inspire further research on not only caterpillars but perhaps many more species. This silent observation of a caterpillar's movement lead to the discovery of it having the gut and wall container move separately from each other, so research on others could lead to ground breaking discoveries. The possibilities are endless.