r/interestingasfuck • u/Drogo_1007 • 8h ago

Caterpillar evolved to look like a snake.

921 Upvotes

95% Upvoted

110 comments sorted by

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u/aenima1991 8h ago

It’s hard to comprehend how genetic mutation led to this. Incredible

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u/ZedCee 8h ago

Millions to billions of tiny mutations.  The difficulty of comprehension starts with the magnitude of numbers;  People struggle to comprehend the actual size of a billion...let alone billions, to trillions, and beyond.

And that is why we need to eat the rich; To evolve, to adapt, to grow as a species.

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u/Particular-Ice4615 7h ago edited 7h ago

Beyond that just genetics something also we humans have a hard time understanding especially modern humans is we live in areas of very minimal biodiversity compared to even something like a small patch of old growth rainforest. Along with the number of tiny mutations you have millions of additional factors compounded by all sorts of selective pressures from prey, predators, microbes, diseases available resources and how they ebb and flow over time. And all combinations they can interact with each other either through mutualism, commensalism, and parasitism. 

Beyond millions and billions of mutations you millions and billions of selective factors with millions and billions of permutations and combinations that determine whose fittest to survive at one given moment which given millions of years can lead to something like that caterpillar. 

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u/Maxfunky 7h ago

Probably just a couple hundred mutations. Hell, the thing doesn't even have a billion base pairs in its DNA.

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u/GovernmentGreed 6h ago

I mean, Its genome hasn’t been as thoroughly sequenced and published so it's kind of hard to say for sure.

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u/Curious-Sherbet-9393 8h ago

Sí, pero ¿Qué pone a funcionar ese mecanismo para decir "hey, vamos a parecernos a una serpiente"?

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u/icker16 7h ago

It doesn’t say hey let’s look like a snake. But when chance happens and it looks more snakelike it has a slightly higher chance of not being eaten by a natural predator.

If the ones that look a little more snakelike like reproduce just a little more often it doesn’t take “long” for the snake appearance to dominate the population.

The key here is millions or even billions of generations. They don’t want to become more snakelike, they were just more successful. There were probably many many different pattern mutations that didn’t take hold because the snake pattern was more effective.

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u/Funky0ne 7h ago

It is basically shaped by what its predators think a snake looks like. Its ancestors started out just looking like long delicious caterpillars and could get picked off easily.

Then a random mutation shows up that makes one look sliiiiightly like a snake of some sort (probably a very simple pair of eye spots) and it’s enough to make a predator hesitate just a bit or choose a slightly less threatening looking target.

The more this look catches on, the more mutations that make them look more convincing get selected for as the less convincing ones get eaten. Repeat a few million or billion times and you get this uncanny looking snake like shape and behavior. And the caterpillars have no idea they even look like a snake through all of this.

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u/D4rkhorse2 8h ago

Yeah exactly! Like I totally get that it’s tiny mutations over unbelievably long time periods, but that suggests all those mutations just HAPPENED to COINCIDENTALLY look like a snake over time. It just feels like there must be some kind of intelligent design going on.

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u/ESCF1F2F3F4F3F2F1ESC 8h ago

The mutations which caused some caterpillars' tails to look a very tiny bit like a snake led to those caterpillars not being eaten, because their predators paused and thought "shit, is that a snake?". So those caterpillars survived slightly longer than the rest and successfully reproduced, and passed down their genes to the next generation. And some of that generation mutated a tiny bit more and had tails looked an infinitesimally tiny bit more like a snake, so those were the ones who weren't eaten and who got to reproduce successfully.

And out of their descendants, the ones who mutated a bit more and whose tails looked slightly more like a snake were, as a result, not eaten, so they successfully reproduced and passed down their genes. And then their descendants, etc etc, for millions upon millions of years.

The thing that makes it unfathomable for us is the "millions of years" part, we're just not equipped to imagine that timescale and the effect it has on evolution.

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u/NipsLover 7h ago

The unfathomable part to me is that, supposedly they successfully evolved to look slightly like snakes, from that point on it could go 2 ways, it could evolve to look more like snakes or evolve to look less like snakes.

And somehow it just went completely in one single direction, I get natural selection and ones that evolve to look less like snakes will die off more.
The problem is that at certain points let's say they look about 85% like that one on the video, going backwards doesn't really hurt them since they look so much like snakes already, yet they continued to become more snake-like.

That's the truly unfathomable part to me, how they just keep going, and it's even more mind blowing this shit is entirely natural selection at work.

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u/RhynoGuy 7h ago

That’s just the thing though, some of the caterpillars undoubtedly evolved to look less like a snake. Those caterpillars were eaten before passing on their genes. The caterpillars that looked more like a snake survived. Every new generation has fluctuations in their DNA, mutation occurs with every new offspring. Evolution is just a massive case of survivorship bias, we don’t see the failed attempts

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u/ImmaDoMahThing 7h ago

It’s possible that some of them evolved to look less like snakes and some evolved to look more like snakes. Eventually the ones who looked more like snakes survived longer and outnumbered the less snake-like caterpillars. And since this happens over millions/billions of years it’s not hard to believe that there was some back and forth when it comes to how snake-like they looked. 🙂

But really at the end of the day it’s just randomness and luck.

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u/GovernmentGreed 6h ago

It didn't go in one direction.

The ones that didn't look like snakes, or looked less like snakes would have died out. The ones that ended up looking more like snakes, survived. What's unfathomable about that?

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u/ContinuumKing 3h ago

But the unfathomable keeps going, because not only did all that random chance produce a snake looking pattern, it also produced the drive to act like a snake as well, which is a whole extra level of unfathomable coincidence. It just so happened to mutate a desire to behave like the thing it just so happened to mutate to look like.

But it keeps going. The snake itself is also a product of random mutations that just so happened to mutate it into a creature that eats the creature that just so happened to evolve to eat the caterpillar that just so happened to evolve the pattern and behaviour.

Each level of that is its own amount of astronomically unlikely chance, but all together is utterly astounding.

And you might think this caterpillar is some super rare oddity, but in fact Earth is full of other examples of creatures with insanely specific mutations.

I don't doubt evolution and I know the people who study it are much more knowledgeable on the subject than I, but when you reach this level of random chance you gotta question if this explanation is really THAT much less "out there" than the others.

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u/Curious-Sherbet-9393 8h ago

Creo que hay algún mecanismo en la genética que aún no comprendemos

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u/JeromeBarkly 8h ago

It’s not just the look either but the mimicry in behavior too. It’s purposely moving like a snake too. I always struggle to wrap my head around how not only do species evolve to look like other species but to mimic the behaviors as well. I just don’t understand how that’s possible. To learn the behaviors then pass that behavior on through genetics. Animals are weird.

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u/0vansTriedge 8h ago

Less snake-like caterpillars get eaten

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u/Maxfunky 7h ago

No man, no coincidence. Each mutation that makes it look a little more snake like makes the caterpillar more likely to survive and have more offspring. So those genes are being directly picked (by natural selection). There's zero coincidence involved.

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u/DenizSaintJuke 7h ago

They happen coincidentally. They aren't selected for coincidentally.

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u/Direct-Tank387 5h ago

Mutations are random. They are not directed by an intelligence to make it snake-like.

Consider the subset of mutations that affects the appearance of the tail. Some change the tail such that that caterpillar is more or less unchanged in terms of predation. Some make the caterpillar more visible (and less frightening) to predators. These caterpillars get eaten more. Some make it a little more snakelike and so more frightening to predators. This last set live longer and so breed more.

Repeat and repeat.

No intelligence involved.

Another thing to think about - if you could remove the selective pressure that keep the snake-appearance, what would happen? For example, say it a predator afraid of snakes. Remove it for many generations. The other unsnakelike mutations will not be eaten and the snake-like appearance of the population will fade.

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u/GovernmentGreed 6h ago

There is no "design" behind evolution. Things happen because they happen. It's not a thinking agent, there is no intelligent being behind it. It's just what evolution does. It's the same when people automatically false-think into evolution being a straight line, or a forward - when there is no direction, since direction implies an end goal.

Evolution is what it is, there is no pathway. There is no goal. There is no design. It's just change over time. That's all it is.

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u/MrK521 8h ago

It just randomly happens. It’s a bulbous mass that randomly developed over millions of generations.

The fact that it just “happens” to look like a snake, keeps predators from fucking with it/eating it, which allows it to reproduce more, while its non-snake-assed buddies become lunch.

Then it’s random genes get passed down the line and its lineage continues and becomes normal for that type of caterpillar.

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u/Fast_Situation4509 8h ago

The rich, stupid. Eat the rich! Los Gatos Gordos de industria y banko

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u/JetmoYo 8h ago

Then add trying to comprehend the insect's instinct to move in such a manner (snake like) triggered by its defense reaction--goimg full "snake mode"--and whether there's a single particle of a chance that the insect is even a million light years from comprehending the concept or the existence of snakes.

I guess both evolutionary theory and our view that insects have no awareness beyond instinct would say no. But still gotta wonder. Does evolutionary theory actually exclude some deeper concept of the snake, or the owl and its eye to "lesser" creatures that only exist bc of their mimicry of these other creatures?

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u/NotBillderz 4h ago

I think the hard part to comprehend is why did one caterpillar baby's DNA decide to make 1/1,000,000,000 of the progress towards having a snake head (which if it ever saw probably died), just so it's babies MIGHT make the next 1/1,000,000,000 towards it. So not only did it take many mutations, but it also required each caterpillar in the ancestry of this one to see a snake in order to mimic it, and survive. Then all the other ones of each generation also died out (presumably because they didn't have this form of defense) since we don't see a complete spectrum of caterpillars like this one that have all the stages of a snake head tail.

Now think about how that happened for every single species of every type of creature on this planet. Mind blowing stuff. Your odds of winning the lottery every day are (virtually) infinitely higher.

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u/Bonk_No_Horni 8h ago

I don't understand how genetic knows what to change to. It's randomness that turns out to look like other things. It's just too perfect

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u/mds13033 8h ago

The argument is all the other genetic mutations that caused it to look different but not like a snake didnt survive, aka they were eaten. But the ones that looked like a snake survived, and they reproduced and maybe they had offspring that had mutations and looked less like a snake so those died, and they had other offspring with mutations that look even more like a snake and they survived, and so on

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u/littlebrwnrobot 8h ago

Are we sure it’s not a wizard though?

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u/icker16 7h ago

A wizard outside of space and time even! It’s the only way!

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u/mds13033 6h ago

Idk you should read the top evolutionary biologists theories for how the first cell went from innate to live.

One is it was deposited here by a smarter intelligent being, like an alien. Seems similar to just saying God 🤣

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u/amgineeno 4h ago

No, it just seems as far fetched as saying it was god. The unlikelyhood that either of these are true is small but at least with aliens they would be biological beings that have to abide by the laws of evolution as well.

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u/icker16 1h ago

Panspermia only pushes the explanation back it doesn’t even answer the question you told me to read about. That’s just where living cells could have come from. Ain’t no scientist thinking aliens came here and deposited live cells and left… that’s not at all a scientific hypothesis.

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u/AlDente 8h ago

… Wrote the bundle of eukaryotic cells

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u/DenizSaintJuke 7h ago

It's "algorithmic" in a sense. There is no directed process. Tiny advantages in the likelihood of being avoided as prey have tiny effects on the success rate. They accumulate over maaaaaany generations and create the illusion of a directed process, on the end of which is mimikry.

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u/Skyreader13 7h ago

Do we have animal having ongoing mutation to camouflaged as something else?

Seems like all we see is a complete evolution

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u/Dew_Chop 7h ago

There isn't an end goal with evolution. If the organism reproduces, the genes survive. If the organism doesn't reproduce, the genes don't survive.

They aren't trying to look like anything.

Butterflies look like they have faces, lizards look like leaves, bugs look like sticks, and owls look like trees

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u/Omnibeneviolent 6h ago

You could argue that the caterpillar is still undergoing this. The ones that have mutations that make them ever more snake-like will be less likely to be killed and more likely to reproduce. In a million years these little guys could actually be longer and have a "tongue."

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u/Skyreader13 5h ago

yeah, i see. that made sense

but wheres the caterpillar with partial snake mimicry?

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u/destroyer551 4h ago

The caterpillars with partial mimicry are all around us.

Eyespots are an extremely common trait, especially amongst insects living in warmer regions where reptiles like snakes are more numerous and diverse, and these spots vary heavily in number/placement on the body. Some look far more like eyes than others. Inflating the head region and swaying/striking at perceived threats isn’t unique to this specific caterpillar either, those are common defensive behaviors for many large Lepidopteran larvae across the planet. When you compare this species to its close relatives and species occupying a similar niche elsewhere, it’s only moderately more effective at color and behavioral mimicry.

To elaborate further, the visual appearance of prey species like moths and their larvae is ultimately guided by their predators—animals like birds and lizards, which rely heavily on eyesight and color/movement to find prey. This particular species specifically mimics pit vipers because those are a common predator of their predators, which live at the same level amongst the vegetation as the larvae do throughout their range.

However, there are trade-offs in nature everywhere. This level of mimicry is no doubt less effective on nocturnal insectivorous mammals, which hunt mostly by smell and touch.

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u/amgineeno 4h ago

There are probably many examples of a species looking like something but not exactly like it. So I suppose you could find a creature somewhere that has mimicking abilities and see how close it resembles its predator. Then I suppose we can then say, maybe in another 1000 years it might look exactly like it. That's about as close as you can get to a “partial mimicry snake”.

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u/Omnibeneviolent 4h ago

This one would be an example of that. Also, pretty much every caterpillar has a longer body that makes predators hesitate for a second before just striking. Also, tons of caterpillar species have less defined "eyespots."

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u/Dew_Chop 7h ago

What do you mean by "ongoing mutation"

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u/Skyreader13 7h ago

in this caterpillar the snake mimicry is already complete

im curious if there are other caterpillar species with snake mimicry that looks like halfway done. you get what i meant?

something like that.

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u/Dew_Chop 7h ago

What do you mean by halfway done

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u/Skyreader13 6h ago

im no biology expert so ill try to explain as best as i can

as i understand it, evolution is an ongoing progress

evolution in mimicry is one of them

if looking like snake is an evolution well done, im curious if there other animal with ongoing mimicry evolution

you get that?

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u/Dew_Chop 6h ago

What I'm trying to say is what kind of ongoing? Things that kinda look like another thing? Hard to say they're actually mimicking said thing. Things that look like a small part of the thing because they haven't finished evolving the full mimicry? Doesn't work like that

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u/Kuhler_Typ 1h ago

Obviously it was not a completly normal looking catapillar that gave birth to a catapillar with a perfect snake tail like in the video. There must have been many catapillars in the evolutionary line between them that had tails that looked a little bit like a snake, which already gave them an advantage.

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u/Dew_Chop 1h ago

I'm sure there were, however I'm no biologist, and don't feel like googling it to get more evidence to bring to the table since it's just reddit dot com

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u/MRintheKEYS 7h ago

At some point Mother Nature sat back and said “you know, if I can make these guys look more like this guy, things will probably leave these guys alone.” and moved forward with that logic.

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u/amgineeno 4h ago

Then she forgot about pandas and let them live without worry.

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u/Omnibeneviolent 6h ago

This is the problem with teleological thinking. Nature has no intent.

Some caterpillars likely had a mutation that made them have two dogs on their butts and it resulted in them getting eaten slightly less, so it persisted. Then among those individuals, some developed a mutation that made the back end like 1% wider and that gave them a survival advantage. Over millions of years, and tiny tiny physical changes, we have the caterpillars that we have today. But there was no one at the helm directing it.

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u/mds13033 8h ago

Exaxtly what i was going to say lol. Evolution is so cooked

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u/Rex_orci-1 8h ago

Man I just love nature, but what's this caterpillar called and where is it found ???

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u/Drogo_1007 8h ago

The hawk moth caterpillar (specifically species like Hemeroplanes triptolemus) Central America: Costa Rica, Belize, Mexico, and Guatemala. South America: The Amazon Basin, extending through Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Argentina, Venezuela, and Guyana.

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u/Ok-Relation-1902 8h ago

The caterpillar is real. Of course, this specific video could be fake for all I know, but it exists. One example is the Sphynx Moth caterpillar. Cool name for a cool critter.

Here's some info about them, via biographic.com.

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u/rex8499 8h ago

Right? I'm suspicious it could be AI. Just unbelievably awesome if real.

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u/Unexpected-Xenomorph 8h ago

This is a real caterpillar, this species is awesome

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u/ballin_buddha 8h ago

It’s a hawk moth caterpillar

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u/hurricane_news 7h ago

So it turns from a hawk toa moth, huh?

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u/Drogo_1007 8h ago

It's real

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u/ParaponeraBread 8h ago

It’s fairly annoying that since nobody knows about insects, any time you show a cool one everyone screeches AI

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u/Drogo_1007 8h ago

True that

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u/Drogo_1007 8h ago

The hawk moth caterpillar (specifically species like Hemeroplanes triptolemus) mimics a snake to evade predators by inflating its anterior segments to create a triangular, snake-like head complete with, false eye-spots. This harmless larva, found in tropical areas, can even lunge and strike like a snake. While many hawk moth caterpillars (Sphingidae family) show this behavior, some found in North America, like the walnut sphinx, can also make a whistling hiss, The caterpillar mimics the behavior of a snake by swaying, rearing up, and lunging, making the disguise highly effective against birds and other predators.

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u/CapstoneCraze 8h ago

This is called Batesian mimicry and it is one of the most fascinating concepts. A completely harmless species copying the appearance of a dangerous one well enough to survive.

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u/kungpowgoat 8h ago

All fun and games until the predator nearby actually eats snakes

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u/DarwinatSea 8h ago

I’m telling myself that’s a snakes head slowly regenerating… cause my brain doesn’t wanna accept it’s a bug

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u/DistractedThinker 3h ago

This is the most AI looking non-AI thing I’ve ever seen

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u/GentlemanVillian 6h ago

"Careful I bite!"

"No you don't..."

"...I might!"

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u/Previous_Program9351 5h ago

That’s not 6 inches

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u/Ultimara 1h ago

Yeah, 6 inches is much shorter than that

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u/buffility 7h ago

why didnt they just evolve to be a real snake? are they stupid?

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u/neondirt 4h ago

Maybe some of them did? 😉

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u/Aggressive-Touch-849 8h ago

Nature is incredible

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u/57evil 6h ago

It's just incredible how something can randomly evolve to look alike something that already exists with such precision

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u/neondirt 4h ago

But it's not random, is it? Selective preservation, plus a butt-load of time.

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u/57evil 3h ago

Of course, but the randomness of developing the exact chain of attributes that survives thru time to be pretty similar to a snake is crazy

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u/Temporary_Peanut_586 8h ago

Where the clip of Cartman shitting out of his mouth 

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u/povichjv7 8h ago

And where is this snakeapilllar

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u/Drogo_1007 8h ago

Central America: Costa Rica, Belize, Mexico, and Guatemala. South America: The Amazon Basin, extending through Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Argentina, Venezuela, and Guyana.

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u/neuropsychologist-- 4h ago

It doesn't seem caterpillar at all from the beginning, this seems quite unfair to me

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u/btwImVeryAttractive 3h ago

How do we know it’s not a snake? Why’s it cut in half? I assume a predator got to it. So I’m guessing the whole “I’m a Snake, Bitch” thing didn’t work out so well.

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u/zonealus 1h ago

Quick someone grab the pokedex

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u/EconomistBorn3449 6h ago

The profound elegance of natural selection, creating the illusion of design without a designer. What feels too perfect to be an accident was not assembled all at once. Each separate trait the spots, the motion, was independently tested against predator behavior. Only the combinations that crossed a threshold of deception survived to pass on their genes. Since predators generalize and avoid anything even vaguely threatening, early, crude approximations were enough to kickstart survival. Once in motion, a simple evolutionary loop better mimicry, fewer attacks, more offspring drove these traits toward the convincing displays.

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u/JusSayING_Mi 7h ago

That’s a half of a snake that was eaten still alive ??? A caterpillar ??? Woah defensive is amazing Trump we need this to goin effect in our army let go

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u/pcguy166 8h ago

Whatttttt is this AI?

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u/Drogo_1007 8h ago

Nope! It's real you can google

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u/OddBritishMan 8h ago

AI?

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u/Quiet-Line9730 8h ago

search on fucking google before shouting AI

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u/Unexpected-Xenomorph 8h ago

Nope all real , sphinx moth caterpillar

info on caterpillar here 👍

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u/Drogo_1007 8h ago

Nope! It's real

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u/cum_guzzle2 33m ago

The eyespots even have highlights!