Ruud Kleinpaste
Ruud Kleinpaste explains how and why change is good – at least for some of our tiniest neighbours and flatmates!
The clever bugs that can literally crawl out of their skin.
a lot of people are not comfortable with change. Whether it is in the workplace, your garden, the climate, or the shape of your body, change is something we really need to get used to a lot better for our own mental health.
When Darwin uttered his famous words “survival of the fittest”, he wasn’t setting up some ridiculous competitive economic system for businesses that strive for growth at all cost – he was talking about the fittest in terms of adapting to change.
Insects and other invertebrates are absolutely brilliant at that game. These critters are able to respond to changing conditions in a heartbeat. They need to, in order to survive. Rapid life cycles require perfect timing to take advantage of available food sources and conditions.
Roaches (the world’s most amazing and efficient recyclers) are the perfect example, especially those famous “pest species” that quickly worked out how advantageous it would be to associate with that new species of mammal called Homo sapiens.
Modern humans entered an already sustainable ecosystem some 200,000 years ago (a mere blink of an eye in the evolutionary time scale).
Cockroaches noticed that this new, clumsy primate species is not very well adapted to living on Earth; humans don’t seem to know the rules or operating systems of the planet, they are extraordinarily messy and leave a lot of rubbish and food waste lying around.
Roaches love that. Cockroach eggs hatch into roach nymphs (immatures) and the way these flat, fast critters grow is by moulting their skin – another clever example of change.
Invertebrates wear their skeleton on the outside of their body and this tough, waterproof and resilient skin cannot grow; hence the regular requirement of shedding the old skin and forming a soft, new one underneath.
Initially this skin is almost pure white, due to the lack of pigments, but over time the colours come back as the roach skin hardens.
I often have “albino roaches” reported to me via letters, emails or questions on talkback radio.
Excited gardeners and householders assume they’ve discovered something absolutely rare or new.
Nah – just some regularly scheduled change!
But have you ever thought much about the actual process of the skin moult?
Literally every part of the body needs to be extracted from the old skin; each antenna, each leg, every eye, palp and mandible.
Now, that is what I call a microchange, in that it literally covers the finest details.
Most people will be familiar with the eclosion (hatching) of a monarch butterfly as it backs out of its chrysalis. Amazing, detailed, dramatic, exclusive, “live on air”… and much better than television or Facebook. But why stop there?
When you go out into your garden at night with a torch and you keep your eyes open for invertebrates, you may be so lucky as to see this microchange happen and it is an absolute miracle to watch.
Think of a tree weta, with huge, long antennae, each with thousands of sensors for smell and touch.
All this has to be unpacked and extracted, and the inner workings reassembled. Same with the legs and cerci and – if you’re a female – that long ovipositor as well! I’ve learned a few things about how these large insects accomplish that task of changing their skin: they use gravity to assist them with the extraction. Always a bit tricky, because even the tiny crampons on the end of your feet need to come out of the old skin. So, which leg will be the last to be removed? Are the new legs strong enough to hang onto a branch, leaf or twig so that you don’t come crashing down with your soft new body armour? Come to think of it, every invertebrate goes through this process at least a few times in their development. I remember watching a red-back spider for a few hours from “whoa” to “go!”. Eight legs plus a few body parts, suspended from a sturdy matrix of silk, slowly unpacking itself in the artistry of slow change. Remarkably, the spider just lets the old, discarded skin float away in the breeze. The weta, however, eats its old skeleton after moulting and never wastes a molecule of micro-nutrients and minerals.
I can’t help but think there’s got to be lesson here somewhere. ✤
Literally every part of the body needs to be extracted from the old skin; each antenna, each leg, every eye, palp and mandible.