"[water rushing]" "[Man vocalizing]" "As human beings, we are instinctively drawn toward the grandeur of the natural world, to spectacular displays that inspire us with their magnitude and power." "[Choir singing in African language]" "During moments like these, we are understandably filled with the genuine sense of awe." "Yet nature's most stunning revelations, aren't always defined by sheer force or physical scale." "For often, in secluded corners of our planet, many of Earth's greatest wonders take center stage." "Wonders of rare beauty and complexity, creativity, and design... wonders born on the gossamer wings of an insect, weighing less than an ounce." "[Choir continues]" "[Dr. Richard Stringer] As you watch a butterfly..." "To describe what you're looking at, you can't really put it into words." "And I said to myself," "I want to be part of that." "That is the coolest thing." "That's biology." "That's also magic." "[Dr. Thomas Emmel] When you hold a living butterfly in your hand for the first time" "Maybe you've netted it, or you picked it off a flower or something, and here's this incredibly beautiful organism, intricately shaped, with its feet and antennae, and all these things moving at once." "[Ron Boender] Every one of these 20,000 species have different color patterns, and every one of them has different shaped wings." "The diversity is just so magnificent." "If I was the greatest artist in the world, there was no way I could come up with all of these patterns." "I mean, it would be just absolutely impossible." "[Dr. Nelson] If you open the work of a lepidopterist" "(Someone who studies butterflies.)" "somewhere in that writing you're going to find the language of astonishment." "The fact that it goes through a caterpillar stage, and then becomes this mysterious chrysalis, out of which this flying creature emerges, has captured the imagination of people since antiquity." "Throughout history, butterflies have touched the human mind and soul, on levels both scientific and philosophical." "3,500 years ago," "Egyptian artists studied their anatomies and then rendered them as icons of beauty and perfection of form." "In Aztec and Mayan folklore, the insects symbolized life and death." "And to the ancient Greeks," ""Psyche" " " The word for butterfly-- literally meant, "the soul"." "Today, terms like "magical" and "miraculous", are often used to describe their mysterious life cycles." "For almost every butterfly, it is a cycle that begins often hidden from the eyes of the world." "Depending upon its species, a female butterfly can lay hundreds of eggs during her brief lifetime." "Each initiates an extraordinary process of growth and transformation." "[Paul Nelson] The eggs are remarkable in themselves." "They have species-specific architectures." "Some of which are just astonishing." "For instance, if you look at a Monarch egg, it has a beautiful symmetrical structure." "It looks like a little miniature dome or cathedral." "Ranging in size from a pinhead, to the width of a child's finger nail, each egg is attached to a plant, by an adhesive fluid secreted by the butterfly." "They are lined with a coating of wax, that helps keep them moist and viable." "Each egg is deposited on a specific species of plant called a "host."" "These host plants are the only source of food a butterfly's offspring will eat, so accurate identification of their leaves and branches is crucial." "And the females are well equipped for the task." "[Ron Boender] The perception that they have of the odor of those plants is just overwhelming." "So they can find those plants for miles." "And once it gets near its host plant, it can tell that the odor is getting stronger and stronger." "Then it begins to focus on leaf shape." "Instinctively it knows what leaf shape its host plant has." "And it begins to taste." "And it tastes with its feet, with its forelegs." "They drum the leaves, they scratch the leaves, and then they use their proboscis to taste the scratch." "They also smell with their antennae." "So they've got the legs, they've got their proboscis, they've got their antennae." "They have all these mechanisms, to make sure that it's the right plant." "If it's the wrong plant, their caterpillars are going to die." "Butterflies just don't make mistakes." "I mean, it's just amazing." "It's just one of the greatest wonders of nature, to watch how this female can do all of this from such great distances." "In many species, the eggs hatch within a week." "Then the newly emerged caterpillar - or larva-- wastes no time embarking on the second stage of its journey to adulthood." "[Ron Boender] We call them "eating machines", because that's their only purpose in life..." "Is to just eat and grow, eat and grow." "[Dr. Richard Stringer] A really hungry, busy caterpillar." "You can actually hear it eating." "It sort of reminds you of corn on the cob, because it bites along, and then it bites along some more." "[Dr. Ann Gauger] It's just munch, munch, munch." "Slice and chew." "Slice and chew." "To build up the raw materials for the next stage of life." "[Dr. Thomas Emmel] A caterpillar could gain in weight so fast, that it would be eating its own weight in leafy material every day." "Equipped with powerful jaws and a digestive tract that extends the length of its body, this stomach-with-legs can multiply its birth-weight, more than 3,000 times in less than two weeks." "[Paul Nelson] To show you how remarkable this weight gain is;" "imagine you had an eight-pound human baby, and he multiplied his weight 3,000 times as he was growing." "That would be a 24,000 pound child." "That's a big kid." "A caterpillar's growth is punctuated by violent surges of transition called molts." "[Dr. Ann Gauger] Imagine the outer skin of a caterpillar as being sort of like a wetsuit." "It's got a little bit of stretch to it, but limited." "It's waterproof, so they don't dehydrate." "Now, as the caterpillar grows, it fills out that wetsuit, and eventually it reaches a point where it can't grow any more." "Then it has to make a new larger version on the inside." "A molt begins when a caterpillar spins, and then grasps, a silk pad, anchors its body securely with small barbs on its legs, and splits its skin near the capsule covering its head." "[Paul Nelson] There are censors in the cuticle, in the skin of the caterpillar, that are strain detectors." "They detect the amount of pressure or strain, being put on the skin." "And when that is too great, they send a signal to the brain of the caterpillar, which then releases a hormone that causes molting." "A caterpillar will undergo four or five molts." "Its rapidly growing body is composed of two distinct cell populations:" "The larval cells, that form all of its organs and enable it to function, and the imaginal cells, that ensure its future as a butterfly." "[Paul Nelson] In the later instars of the caterpillar, one can begin to see what are called imaginal discs." "Now, these are the precursor cell populations, for what will become wings and legs, or sensory structures in the adult." "Most of these imaginal cell clusters develop in pairs, and are positioned throughout the caterpillar's body, in locations that correspond to the organs they will eventually help form in the adult." "[Dr. Ann Gauger] Imaginal discs are precursors, that are there and waiting." "They're set aside to make adult structures." "And at a certain point in development, those cells are triggered to start to grow." "As the end of the larval stage approaches, the caterpillar stops eating, finds a secluded spot, and spins another silk pad." "When finished, it attaches itself with a pair of claspers on the end of its body." "Then hangs, almost motionless." "[Ron Boender] It will hang there for a day or so, usually in a 'J' position." "All kinds of chemical reactions occur within that caterpillar." "It changes color, and you have no idea what's going on inside there, until all of a sudden, it pumps the fluids so that the skin begins to split." "The caterpillar's final molt marks the beginning of the third stage of a butterfly's development, and the appearance of a remarkable structure called a chrysalis." "As the old skin is pushed away, the cremaster, a thin extension on the top of the chrysalis, works its way into position to permanently grasp the silk pad." "With a scanning electron microscope, the cremaster is magnified more than 500 times." "[Ron Boender] The caterpillar has microscopic hooks on the cremaster, and it attaches those hooks to that silk pad, that it puts on the bottom of a leaf or twig." "And it begins to spin." "And this caterpillar spins and spins and spins, because it wants to get rid of that old skin that it has." "During the hour that follows, the chrysalis hardens and takes its final form, as one of the most fascinating processes in nature is set into motion:" "The metamorphosis, from caterpillar into butterfly." "[Paul Nelson] What you see in a chrysalis, is not a shapeless mass, but in fact something very much like a mold for the adult butterfly." "[Dr. Thomas Emmel] You see the wing pads, where the adult wings are going to form." "You see the head and the compound eyes appear." "Visible through the outer case of the pupal shell." "Abdominal segments are very clearly separated from the thoracic segments, where the wings are going to be attached." "All of this is astoundingly new compared to the caterpillar, where everything looked sort of the same, down the whole length of the body." "This transition from an earth-bound, plant-eating arthropod with limited vision and mobility, into a beautiful winged insect that feeds on nectar, navigates with exceptional senses, and can fly 50 miles in a day, is truly a marvel of the natural world." "Exactly how it happens is still very much a mystery." "Yet innovative research at the level of molecules and cells, provides intriguing new clues." "[Dr. Nelson] There is some continuity of tissues, from caterpillar to adult butterfly, but most of what was there in the caterpillar, is going to disappear and be turned into new structures, that have no analog in the caterpillar." "For instance, there's nothing like the compound eye of the adult butterfly, present in the caterpillar." "There's nothing like the proboscis present in the caterpillar, or the long articulated legs in the caterpillar." "So these are all novel structures, that are going to be built." "[Dr. Ann Gauger] In a metamorphic insect, what you've got is two body plans." "You have to first form one functional body plan, and then you have to switch gears and form a new body plan." "I am amazed by development, when it goes from egg to caterpillar, because it's such an intricate process." "But then you have to enter into the chrysalis stage, and you have to get it right again." "So it's like the problem squared." "The creation of a butterfly, begins with the partial destruction of the caterpillar." "Inside the chrysalis, larval cells that formed the caterpillar's limbs and organs, are systematically digested and broken down." "[Paul Nelson] You've got to get rid of or digest the caterpillar tissues." "They won't work for the adult." "In fact, the cells themselves disappear." "But then their components are recycled, and are turned into a kind of soup, out of which the adult structures will be built." "Throughout this process, the imaginal cells," "(The foundation of the adult insect's body.)" "are preserved to differentiate and multiply." "[Dr. Ann Gauger] Now, cell death is programmed." "It's not something that happens by accident." "If you kill the wrong cells, you're in deep trouble." "[Dr. Nelson] It's very carefully engineered." "You're going to save some of the cell populations, so you got to know where you're going to end up before you start." "You don't want to digest everything, just the things that need to be eliminated." "Then the imaginal discs rapidly begin to proliferate, and you can trace a continuous pathway into the pattern on the wing." "This timeless drama of death and renewal, is performed in the seclusion of the chrysalis, without audience or applause." "During the past two decades, scientists have worked diligently, to pull back the curtain." "[Dr. Richard Stringer] I've been at this about 15 years, and the possibility of somehow getting in there to photograph what's inside the chrysalis..." "That question was out there all along." "And it occurred to me that;" "magnetic resonance imaging, might be a perfect tool to use, to see what goes on inside a chrysalis." "The challenge of visually documenting a butterfly's development led biologist Richard Stringer to Duke University, and its Center for In Vivo Microscopy." "There, over a 10-day period," "Monarch butterfly chrysalises, were scanned throughout a complete cycle of metamorphosis." "Each scan visually sliced the chrysalis into more than 200 sections." "Eight hours into the first day," "Stringer observed significant changes." "[Dr. Richard Stringer] Even though it was very early in the development of the chrysalis, you could already see things forming, that were going to be part of the butterfly, including the head, including the brain," "including leg muscles, wings, antennae." "The longer it scanned, the more detail you get." "Stringer's magnetic resonance data, was later used to create a three-dimensional dissection, of the butterfly's body as it took shape within the chrysalis." "On day one, the caterpillar's massive digestive tract, is still nearly full-size." "By the tenth day, hours prior to the butterfly's emergence, the tract has been totally reconstructed." "It is now about 25% of its original volume." "Ideal for the adult insect, that will feed almost exclusively on nectar." "During this transformation, the butterfly's reproductive organs," "(Non-existent in the caterpillar.)" "develop completely..." "While its tubelike heart is remodeled, to fit and function within the abdomen of the butterfly." "In the front of the chrysalis, dramatic anatomical changes continue." "The caterpillar's simple eyes, capable only of discerning darkness and light, are replaced by large, complex organs of vision." "A muscular system, that will power flight and locomotion, is built from both imaginal, and recycled larval cells." "The butterfly's six legs, two antennae, and feeding tube, are individually formed, while tightly compacted into a mass against the wall of the chrysalis." "And four wings, each with elaborate networks of veins and scales, are shaped, decorated, and refined in less than two weeks." "[Dr. Richard Stringer] It's like a different organism." "And as the week goes on, transitions have to take place in the heart, transitions have to take place in the antennae, transitions have to take place in the reproductive organs." "You've got a big orchestra in there." "You've got a great big orchestra, and you've got a conductor, some conducting force that's responsible for it all." "I can say without any doubt, that it was the most amazing thing I'd ever seen." "Caterpillar into butterfly." "The transformation to an entirely new way of living, is nearly complete." "During the first moments after emergence, the butterfly makes final preparations to fly and eat, as it finishes construction of its proboscis and wings." "[Dr. Thomas Emmel] The proboscis is a straw-like tongue." "Hollow in the middle." "And the butterfly has muscles in its head, which can create a suction." "A sort of a suction pump, and draw nectar up." "Within the chrysalis, the proboscis developed as two separate pieces." "Now, immediately following emergence, the butterfly must assemble them into a single unit, or die of starvation." "[Ron Boender] It's two half-straws." "There's a channel on one side, and has to get it into the channel, the other side." "You'll see two little appendages on their head called palpi." "And those palpi seem to protect the proboscis, and help that proboscis get put together." "As the butterfly knits together the proboscis, its wings also take on their final structure." "[Ron Boender] When the butterfly comes out of the chrysalis, the wings are like velvet." "They're soft, they're pliable." "There's veins." "The wings are filled with veins." "[Paul Nelson] What the butterfly does is, using its abdominal muscles, pumps hemolymph fluid, into the veins, into the wings, and they quickly expand to their full size and shape." "Each of the butterfly's four wings, is covered with thousands of microscopic scales, that are positioned like shingles on a rooftop." "These scales are not only arranged for aerodynamic efficiency and spectacular patterns, they also act as solar panels, collecting heat to warm the flight muscles of the cold-blooded insect." "A butterfly's eyes are also formed from a vast network of component parts." "Thousands of hexagonal light receptors, work in unison to produce a mosaic view of the insect's environment." "While the spherical shape of each compound eye, creates a field of view, more than 180-degrees wide." "[Dr. Thomas Emmel] They have four-color vision systems, pigment systems, which enable them to see from the ultraviolet to infrared." "Butterflies have better color vision than humans." "The butterfly's antennae, legs, and feet, complete its sensory system." "The antennae, that control balance and equilibrium in flight, recognize the aromas most important to the butterfly." "Their clubbed ends are covered with scales, that can detect the scent of a host plant, or prospective mate more than a mile away." "A butterfly has three pairs of jointed legs, with scales and fine hairs, that sense vibrations, and possibly sound." "While its legs and claws are lined with nerve cells, that react upon touch to a leaf's distinct flavor." "This heightened sense of taste, is activated whenever the insect scratches the surface of a plant." "[Dr. Thomas Emmel] Some of the best biologists and chemists in the world, are now studying the process of metamorphosis, on a series of new levels." "Trying to integrate this with the advances and techniques, that we have for molecular biology, to modern imaging systems." "[Dr. Paul Nelson] In the case of butterflies, it's like a fine piece of art." "You can appreciate it at a sort of technical level, in terms of what was required to get the pigment on the canvas and so forth." "But what's going on, is so much richer than that, and so much more significant than that." "[Dr. Ann Gauger] We know just the bare outlines, of a few of the processes involved for metamorphosis." "It's a mystery." "It's like a black box." "Input larva, black box, output butterfly." "What happened?" "What happened?" "[Ron Boender] And we only know a thousandth of what's going on inside those insects..." "Inside that pinhead brain, and all of the things that it can do." "The way it can navigate, the way it can migrate, the way it can find the females, the way it can find the plant." "It's one of the great wonders of the world." "As science probes deeper into the life cycles of the 20,000 species of butterflies known to inhabit the earth, one story stands unique from any other." "It is an epic saga that unfolds across a continent." "And a journey to the heart of the beauty and mystery, that epitomize metamorphosis." "For more than 30 years, researchers from throughout the world, including biologist Thomas Emmel, have traveled to a secluded forest, to study a phenomenon, unparalleled in nature:" "The Monarch butterfly's migration to Mexico." "[Dr. Thomas Emmel] I've gone down every year since 1981, and many years, made a number of trips." "Two, three, four trips a year." "Here's a butterfly species, that does something truly spectacular." "Just imagine, 300 million Monarchs in one site, that have flown 2,500, 3,000 miles, to end up in these tiny twelve areas, that still exist in the Trans-Volcanic range of south central Mexico." "The Monarch's migration begins each September, when most of the North American population east of the Rocky Mountains, departs for central Mexico." "Their journey can span more than 2,500 miles, and is critical for two reasons:" "Monarchs are tropical butterflies, unable to endure the freezing winter temperatures of the Midwest and Canada." "And their life-cycle, depends upon the milkweed." "More than 100 species of milkweed, grow throughout the United States during the spring and summer." "It is the only plant a female Monarch will select to host her eggs." "Milkweed leaves, contain cardiac glycosides." "Toxic chemicals, that can cause illness or death." "After hatching, the caterpillar eats the plants, and stores their poisons in its outer layer of skin." "Then, during metamorphosis, the glycosides are transferred from caterpillar to adult." "And whenever the Monarch spreads its wings, their distinctive pattern sends a warning to predators:" ""Don't eat me." "I taste terrible."" "Like the Monarch, milkweed cannot survive the harsh North American winter, and by the end of August, it goes to seed." "[Dr. Thomas Emmel] And at that point, the Monarch stops all reproductive activity." "If it's a female, no more eggs." "If it's a male, no more sperm." "They still feed, are active, but they show no interest in sex or reproduction." "With no milkweed for their eggs until spring, the Monarchs devote themselves entirely to preparation for a transcontinental flight." "They spend the final weeks of summer, feeding on nectar, to build reserves of carbohydrates and fats." "The fuel for their journey." "Monarchs born in the spring or early summer, have a life-span of only two-to-four weeks." "But the generation that emerges in August, is genetically programmed to live up to nine months." "A provision crucial to survival." "[Dr. Thomas Emmel] The last generation of the summer..." "The one that's going to live all winter, and into the following spring, is really an interesting problem for biologists, because here you have two, three generations preceding that generation, where the adult lives at most," "two weeks, three weeks, four weeks, and then dies." "And now, all of a sudden, a generation is produced, that's going to live nine months." "Nine times as long." "It's thought that there's a genetic difference, comprised of about six genes, that are unique in this generation." "That enable it to live that long." "Often called, the "Methuselah generation,"." "Their longevity will enable the butterflies to fly south for eight weeks, endure four months of winter, and then start the return trip north, to establish a new generation of Monarchs in the spring." "With the approach of autumn, the angle of the sun at mid-day drops below 56 degrees." "The shortening days are the butterfly's cue, to begin their migration." "A network of sensory organs, will enable them to navigate throughout the journey south." "[Dr. Thomas Emmel] The question is; how the butterfly figures out what direction to go." "We're looking at several things." "The butterfly is able to detect day length, through tiny organs on its antennae." "It's able to detect the position of the sun above the horizon by visual senses," "and also compensate with a biological time-clock in its brain, for the movement of that sun." "From early in the morning on the eastern horizon, to the western horizon, at the end of the day when it sets." "So, they're moving south, following the sun's directions, and they're adjusting their flight each day." "From as far north as Canada, Michigan, and Maine, the Monarchs travel an average of 50 miles a day, as they glide on currents of warm thermal air." "By mid-October, their primary migration routes converge, as most of the butterflies, funnel into southern Texas before crossing the border." "Some, however, take a more direct route, across the Gulf of Mexico." "In late October, on evenings following the passage of a cold weather front," "Monarchs descend upon the gas and oil rigs, throughout the gulf." "Perhaps attracted by the lights, the butterflies interrupt the longest non-stop leg of their journey." "Here, among the pipes, ropes, and heavy machinery, they rest for the night." "In 1993, biologist Gary Ross and a team of volunteers, documented Monarchs on more than twenty platforms during a two-week period." "At daybreak, the butterflies warmed their flight muscles, calculated their bearing by the position of the sun, and then resumed their journey." "After crossing the southern border of Texas, the eastern Monarch population merges into a fly-way about 50 miles wide." "During this leg of their migration south, they follow the geography of the Sierra Madre-Oriental mountain range." "Then, near a region called the Sierra Gorda, they abruptly change direction and cut through a pass, heading southwest toward the interior of Mexico." "[Dr. Thomas Emmel] And there they find the end of the desert, and the start of the transverse mountain range, that runs west-east, and that's the Trans-Volcanic range." "The Trans-Volcanic, is the tallest range in Mexico." "Its mountains contain rich deposits of heavy metals, that may play an important role, in the Monarch's navigation." "[Dr. Thomas Emmel] Gold, iron, manganese, copper..." "All of these metals created an anomalous magnetic field." "And this seems to be important in bringing the Monarchs in, because the Monarchs have tiny particles of the mineral magnetite in their body at the base of the wing, and in the thorax and the abdomen." "And these are believed to help them navigate, to precisely this mountain range, because there's a very strong magnetic anomaly as one approaches this range, due to all these heavy metals near the surface." "So the particles of magnetite rotate like a little bar magnet inside a cell, and that cues the Monarch that it needs to head in a certain direction." "[birds cawing]" "Until late in the 20th century, the only people to ever observe the butterfly's arrival in Mexico, were the farmers and miners, who lived and worked in these volcanic mountains." "Then, on January 2, 1975, in a forest 70 miles west of Mexico City, a spectacular discovery, opened the door for the rest of the world." "[choir vocalizes]" "Millions of Monarch butterflies, had gathered in a forest of Oyamel firs," "10,000 feet above sea level." "Fredrick Urquhart, a Canadian biologist who devoted his career to the search for this colony, described it as "a glorious, incredible place,"" ""where butterflies swirl through the air like autumn leaves."" ""Shimmering against the mountain sky,"" ""and drifting across our vision in a blizzard of orange and black."" "Science now glimpsed the true magnitude of the eastern Monarch's migration." "[Dr. Thomas Emmel] One of the really remarkable things about this migration, is that all of these individuals have never made the trip before." "It was their grandparents or great-grandparents, two, three, four generations ago." "They have no leader who has made the trip before." "Unlike Whooping Cranes or Sandhill Cranes, they don't have an older experienced adult, to take the lead, and show them where to go, where to stop at night." "But in the end, it ends up on the very same trees, same area, same slope of the mountain, that its parents or grandparents left from the previous year." "Since 1975, a dozen permanent over-wintering colonies, have been discovered in these mountains." "Each maintains a critically balanced microclimate, that helps sustain the Monarchs until spring." "Average temperatures in the colonies, range from 35 to 60 degrees Fahrenheit." "Warm enough to protect the insects from freezing." "And cool enough to minimize their expenditure of energy." "For more than four months, hundreds of millions of butterflies, live in a state of semi-hibernation, while slowly consuming the reserves of nutrients they accumulated during the summer." "The bark and needles on the fir trees provide stable footholds." "And by flocking in roosts, several layers deep, they can endure days or weeks of inclement weather." "[thunder rumbles in distance]" "[woman vocalizes]" "[choir vocalizes]" "With the arrival of spring, the insects prepare to depart the over-wintering sites." "After the sun warms the colony, the Monarchs leave their roosts for a few hours each day." "They travel short distances in search of nectar and water, that will nourish them during their journey north." "At lower elevations, they feed on the new bloom of wild flowers, and draw moisture from the damp grass, and the rivulets that run down from the mountains." "The lengthening days also trigger a change in the Monarch's biology." "In early March, the butterfly's reproductive organs become active, as the males produce sperm, and the females, eggs." "After mating, they leave the colonies and head north, ready to establish a new generation." "The Monarch's departure from Mexico, coincides with the appearance of a new crop of milkweed in southern Texas." "When the females find the host plants, they lay their eggs." "Their life-cycle now complete, they will soon die." "Throughout the spring and summer, successive generations of Monarchs, each living about four weeks, follow the milkweed, as it grows progressively across the Midwest and into southern Canada." "Then, in late August, near a dairy farm in Minnesota, or a lakeshore in Ontario, butterflies from a new "Methuselah generation" emerge, ready to undertake the great migration once again." "[Dr. Thomas Emmel] The series of steps that the Monarch takes during this trip, both coming south and going north again in the spring, is truly astounding." "Here's an insect moving by the billions, between three countries." "To imagine a tiny brain the size of a Monarch brain, being able to carry all the information that it needs to make this 2500-mile trip, adjusting daily for the movement of the sun as it drops lower on the horizon," "getting near the over-wintering site in Mexico, and somehow ending up in the same mountain range that their grandparents came from the previous spring." "But that tiny brain puts all of this together." "It is a wonderful mystery that's going to attract scientists' attention for many, many decades or centuries to come." "And we are only beginning to understand how miraculous this is." "[Dr. Paul Nelson] It's impossible to look at a caterpillar turning into a butterfly and not ask: "How"." "Their metamorphosis, their migration, their lifecycle." "How did this happen?" "How is it regulated?" "How is it controlled?" "This astonishing remarkable transformation." "A biologist who encounters a puzzle like metamorphosis, is going to view that puzzle through an analytical filter." "A lens." "It's a way of trying to understand the problem." "And for most biologists, that lens is going to be an undirected evolutionary process." "Since the late 19th century, most explanations for the life-cycle of a butterfly, or any other organism, have shared a basic premise:" "To be considered scientific, they must rely exclusively upon undirected natural causes." "This view was first published by Charles Darwin, in his theory of evolution through random variation and natural selection." "And, today, it is widely accepted as a foundation of modern biology." "But can such a theory account for the origin of metamorphosis?" "[Dr. Paul Nelson] On the evolutionary view of life, in particular on the Darwinian view of life, everything that an organism does, every feature that it has, all of its details ultimately relate to the requirements of natural selection." "So, to build the first butterflies, natural selection would have had to work entirely through genetic mutations." "They're the raw materials of evolution." "A mutation is an error in the DNA of a living organism." "An alteration of the genetic code." "The theory of natural selection contends, that the accumulation of mutations, over enormous periods of time, fuel the evolution of all complex life on earth." "[Dr. Ann Gauger] Generally speaking, mutations are mistakes." "It's a change to the DNA." "And these mutations happen in a random way." "They're not guided or directed, to happen in the right order, in the right sequence, in the right time." "[Dr. Paul Nelson] There's no foresight involved in this process." "No vision of what the organism needs in the future." "Now, there's a real problem with that, especially when you consider the single most important element of metamorphosis:" "The chrysalis." "A butterfly chrysalis connects two fundamentally different ways of living." "It is both a bridge and a workshop, where one type of organism is transformed into another." "[engine whirring]" "The magnitude of this transformation, has been compared to a Model T Ford, [tires screech] that suddenly encases itself within a garage." "[metal slams, objects clatter] [mechanical whirring]" "Inside, most of the car breaks down into fragments of metal, rubber, and glass." "[clattering]" "These pieces then reorganize themselves into components more complex, than any that previously existed in the Model T." "After several days, the garage door bursts open, and a radically different mode of transportation lifts off into the sky." "[engine powers up] [blades whirring]" "[Dr. Paul Nelson] Now, an analogy like that is pure whimsy." "But, even if it were somehow possible," "I don't think turning a car into a helicopter, would be nearly as impressive, as the actual transformation that takes place inside a chrysalis." "From the moment the chrysalis is formed, caterpillar tissues are destroyed and then recycled to help build wings, compound eyes, reproductive organs, and navigational systems of stunning beauty and efficiency." "Yet despite the importance of cell death in the chrysalis, the origin of the process, defies the basic logic of natural selection." "[Dr. Paul Nelson] One of the fundamental requirements of natural selection, is reproduction." "You've got to be able to make copies of yourself, in particular of your genes." "You've got to be able to pass them on." "But a chrysalis..." "Unless it represents a bridge to something yet to come, is really a casket." "If you're a caterpillar, you're entering your own grave." "Turning most of your body into a molecular soup, would be suicide." "[Dr. Ann Gauger] A caterpillar, unless it makes it through to the adult, is no good because it can't reproduce." "You're not going to have offspring, so you're a dead-end street, evolutionarily." "So it wouldn't be any benefit at all to kill yourself, unless you've got a hidden plan up your sleeve." "You know, like, "Okay, I know I can commit suicide,"" ""because there's a new me waiting to happen."" "[Dr. Paul Nelson] The caterpillar is not going to enter the chrysalis, without simultaneously knowing:" ""I've got a plan for getting out of this."" ""I'm heading towards the adult butterfly."" ""I'm going to reconstitute these tissues in the adult form,"" ""emerge, and go on my way."" "But that's not how natural selection operates." "It can't look into the future and somehow anticipate;" "what an evolving organism is going to need in a week, or a month, or a thousand years from now." "So, if the first caterpillars were evolving into existence-- without foresight, it's highly unlikely natural selection would retain a destructive process like cell death." "This absence of foresight is not the only challenge to Darwinian theory." "Biologists have long recognized, that natural selection cannot succeed by taking large evolutionary leaps." "Instead, the process can only move forward through a series of small, incremental steps." "[Dr. Paul Nelson] In evolution, it's the smaller scale changes that have a better chance of being passed on, because they're relatively limited in their scope." "That means they're disrupting less, and they're more likely to be tolerated by the organism." "But when it comes to the origin of metamorphosis, the notion of gradual evolutionary change, comes to a dead end." "By its very nature, metamorphosis is an all-or-nothing proposition." "And throughout biological history, its success has hinged upon the immediate availability of a full set of instructions-- including genes, proteins, and the developmental program required to integrate them." "[Dr. Ann Gauger] It all has to be in place ahead of time." "It needs to have the genes in place." "The regulatory elements that are going to turn the genes on and off." "It has to have all the cells preprogrammed to do what they're going to do when the time comes, so they respond to the signals they get in the right way." "The larval cells have to know they're going to die." "You got to remember, the caterpillar isn't thinking about things." "It's not saying, "Okay, now it's time to dissolve my epidermis,"" "and, "Okay, what about that gut?"" ""Got to get working on that gut."" "No." "It has to happen rapidly and in a coordinated fashion." "Once you're committed to the chrysalis stage, there's no going back." "You have to complete the transition." "[Dr. Paul Nelson] A caterpillar that's equipped to go 10% or 25% of the way through metamorphosis, is no-way through metamorphosis." "Part way into a process that requires getting out the other side as a fully-formed adult, doesn't work." "[Dr. Ann Gauger] You have to recreate adult legs, adult antennae, adult eyes." "You have to change the shape of the brain, and the connections between the antennae and the eyes." "You have to reformat the gut, so that it switches from eating plant material to eating nectar." "How many mutations does it take, and how do you coordinate all of that?" "If you get the eyes right but the gut wrong, it's a failure as a butterfly." "If you get the wings right and the legs right, but the muscles don't attach, that butterfly's going nowhere." "It's dead." "You begin to see the depths of the problem." "So for evolution to have created this sort of pathway, gradually, it would take a miracle." "[Dr. Paul Nelson] Metamorphosis, if it came into existence at all by an undirected process, had to have done so in one fell-swoop." "Natural selection, by definition," "I would say, cannot build that kind of process." "To create a process like metamorphosis, you'd need a totally different type of cause." "Something that could see a distant target, keep that target in focus, and provide all the resources necessary, to hit the bulls-eye on the first shot." "I think the only cause that could have accomplished that, is an intelligent agent." "From a philosophical perspective, the suggestion of intelligent design, as the explanation for the origin and development of life, contradicts the assumptions of many biologists." "But when considered objectively, evidence may be plentiful;" "within the walls of a chrysalis, or on a Monarch's wings." "[Dr. Paul Nelson] Metamorphosis not only challenges the Darwinian picture of life, in fact it points, in a positive way, toward the truth of intelligent design." "If you saw a mechanical device of the sophistication of a butterfly, you would not, for a moment, hesitate to ascribe that to intelligence, because the butterfly is so much more sophisticated," "(Almost beyond our comprehension,) than anything that we make." "Planning, foresight, artistry, engineering" "Normally in our experience, when we see those criteria fulfilled, when we see those indicators, we say, "That's positive evidence of intelligent design."" "To build a butterfly, you need a cause that can visualize a long-range objective, and then direct every step of the process, that's required to make it happen." "Only intelligence, (Universally in our experience.)" "is capable of doing that." "You also need a cause that can re-use lower-level component parts, to construct a different higher-level system." "For butterflies, the same genes and proteins that build you a caterpillar, can be reused to give you an adult flying insect." "As Nobel Prize winning geneticist Barbara McClintock noted," ""It's astounding that two brilliantly designed organisms"" ""share a single genome."" "To build a butterfly, you have to be able to assemble a network of elaborate sub-structures, like wings, navigational systems, and a proboscis... and then integrate all these systems into a very complex organism." "And you need a cause with an artist's eye, for color and pattern and shape..." "A sense of beauty and aesthetics, that extends way beyond utilitarian purposes, like camouflage or species recognition." "There may well be in butterflies;" "aspects of beauty that are there, not for the sake of reproduction or survival, but for us to appreciate." "[Dr. Ann Gauger] A lot of people I know who study biology, do it because they find it beautiful." "Natural selection has no reason to produce beauty." "Beauty is a sign of the transcendent." "It's purely gratuitous." "We all recognize it." "We just have to acknowledge what it points to." "[Dr. Paul Nelson] As human beings, we have a unique gift that enables us to evaluate evidence and then arrive at logical conclusions." "That's what science is all about." "When you see certain effects in nature, it's your responsibility as an investigator, to find the cause that will explain the effect." "When you process all the evidence revealed through metamorphosis, and then you ask yourself:" "In your own experience, what kind of cause could bring about these results?" "I think the only reasonable answer;" "is an intelligence that transcends the natural world." "A designer with foresight, and a sense of engineering and artistry..." "And the ability to light up the sky on a summer afternoon, with magnificent evidence that life on earth, is the product of something greater, than a blind, undirected process." "[Woman vocalizing]" "[choir vocalizing]"