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    Metamorphosis: Nature's Magical Transformations
    Metamorphosis: Nature's Magical Transformations
    Metamorphosis: Nature's Magical Transformations
    Ebook76 pages1 hour

    Metamorphosis: Nature's Magical Transformations

    By Alvin Silverstein and Virginia Silverstein

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    About this ebook

    With this easy-to-read book, children will discover the facts behind the seemingly magical conversions that transform a wooly caterpillar into a graceful butterfly and a swimming tadpole into a leaping frog. Far from being supernatural, these changes involve a fascinating natural process, and this book presents a well-illustrated look at how some baby animals develop from a larval stage into adults that bear little resemblance to their former selves.
    The authors, seasoned writers of popular science books for children, examine the metamorphoses of moths, honeybees, dragonflies, starfish, and eels. Their imaginative analogies, phrased in simple language, offer a memorable introduction to a fundamental natural process. Ideal for school use, this book offers fascinating facts that will capture young readers outside the classroom as well.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDover Publications
    Release dateOct 21, 2013
    ISBN9780486162966
    Metamorphosis: Nature's Magical Transformations

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      Book preview

      Metamorphosis - Alvin Silverstein

      Glossary

      Metamorphosis: The Magic Change

      Our world is ever changing. It is cold in the winter and warm in the summer. It rains one day, and the sun is out the next. Sometimes changes are very slow—so slow we do not notice them. It takes many millions of years for a mountain to wear away. Sometimes changes are very fast. Have you ever noticed how quickly the little puddles on a wet street dry up when the sun comes out after a shower?

      Living things change too. Children grow bigger and bigger each day, until one day they are as big as their parents. But as they grow, they change mostly in size, not in shape. They already look much like their mothers and fathers. They have two eyes, two ears, a nose, a mouth, two arms, and two legs, just as their parents do.

      Of course this is true, you may say. Don’t all children look like their parents? Many do. A kitten looks like a little cat. A puppy looks like a little dog. A baby bird, with its beak and wings, looks very much like its parents. Even a baby grasshopper is much like its mother and father.

      But some babies do not look at all like their parents. If you saw a wormlike caterpillar, unless you knew, you would never think that it would grow up to be a beautiful butterfly, with large, brightly colored wings. A tadpole, just a big head and a long, swishing tail, does not look at all like its tail-less, hopping parent frogs.

      For a tadpole to turn into a frog, or a caterpillar to turn into a butterfly, a wondrous series of changes must take place. The baby must become almost a new animal before it can be like its parents. This change is called metamorphosis.

      Metamorphosis is found in many different kinds of animals. Some of these are rather close relatives, and so it is to be expected that they would grow and develop in much the same way. Most insects, for example, go through two very different stages of life after they hatch from the egg. But some of the animals that go through a metamorphosis come from very different groups, groups that are not closely related at all. The eggs of a variety of water animals hatch into small swimming creatures that have to go through enormous changes, both inside and out, before they are like their parents; and the adult forms, such as sea squirts, starfish, and eels, have almost nothing in common with each other, except that they are all animals.

      Why do some kinds of animals go through such tremendous changes during their lives, while others, like humans, merely grow in size from infants to adults? Scientists believe that the plants and animals that now live on our earth are the result of a long process of development, stretching back for millions and even billions of years. Long ago, when the earth was young, some simple forms of life appeared and multiplied. Some of their children were slightly different from the parents, much as you are probably a little different from your parents, even though you resemble them in many ways. Once in a while, one of these differences gave a particular creature a small advantage over the other creatures of the world—perhaps it could find more food or have more young or live in places that other creatures could not. This creature would probably live longer and have more descendants than its brothers and sisters. Among its descendants there would again be some that were slightly different, and the best adapted ones of these would thrive and multiply. Gradually a great variety of life forms appeared and spread through the

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