the gut thrust.

noooooo this is not an edition of 'what is thomas wilhelm doing this weekend?'. i just listened to a bunch of super nerds tell me about some new research on morning edition. they've been studying how caterpillars walk, since they don't have bones.

they put the caterpillars on an x-ray treadmill and used lots of different methods to coax them into walking. when they got a look inside, they observed that the caterpillar has a very unique method of locomotion. it's called the gut thrust, and it goes like this:

When the caterpillar finally did get moving, Simon and his advisor Barry Trimmer saw something really unusual. Just at the start of the caterpillar's step, something on its inside swayed forward. "Eventually we were able to establish that we were watching the gut moving back and forth," Simon says.

The team believes that this is an entirely new form of animal movement. They say they are unaware of any other animal where the insides move before the outsides do. (via)

so.

speaking of thomas wilhelm, though, here goes one of his spirit animals! and look at this freak!