Word: caterpillar
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...tone and spirit of the original. The mock-solemn humor of Carroll's perversely logical nonsense is all but lost in a jazzed-up jangle of gags, violence, slapstick and sticky jukebox ballads. Only rarely, e.g., the scene where Alice (spoken by Kathy Beaumont) meets the hookah-smoking caterpillar (Richard Haydn), does the Disney idiom enrich the fun instead of slanting it down to the comic-strip level...
...sadder convictions were never concealed for long. "For 25 years," he complained, "they tear a man to shreds, and then they come and present him with a quill pen made of aluminum." He had little faith in any triumph of human goodness. "In nature," he assured Bunin, "a repulsive caterpillar turns into a lovely butterfly. But with human beings it's the other way round...
Silkworms are fine subjects for the study of growth. Like most insects, they metamorphize, reorganizing nearly all of their body substance into new members and organs. Scattered through the mushy tissues of the big green caterpillars are small groups of cells (imaginal discs) that lie quiescent while the caterpillar is growing...
Wakening Discs. When the caterpillar is full-sized, its tissues dissolve to form a yolky fluid. The imaginal discs wake up suddenly. Nourished by the fluid, they burst into furious growth, constructing within the larva's old skin an entirely new insect: the hibernating pupa. Later, a similar burst of growth turns the pupa into the adult moth...
Glands in the silkworm secrete the hormone which controls the production of an enzyme called cytohrome. This cytochrome is directly responsible for the growth and metamorphosis of the silkworm. Without it, the insect cannot change from caterpillar to pupa to moth. Such an enzyme in a human may be the cause of the malignant growths called cancers...