Welcome to imaginal.
When a caterpillar has chewed it's way through the ecosystem, it eventually becomes so big and fat that it actually can't move anymore. It becomes unsustainable for the caterpillar to be a caterpillar, and so it turns itself into a chrysalis. But inside this chrysalis, it doesn't just magically rearrange it's caterpillar body into that of a butterfly. This level of transformation requires a more radical shift. Inside the chrysalis, the caterpillar dissolves completely until it is nothing more than a nutrient soup. From this soup, new cells start to form, called imaginal cells. At first, the caterpillars immune system tries to attack them - we all have a tendency to resist change, right? But the imaginal cells persist, more and more of them appear and eventually they connect up, forming new structures. These new structures are the foundation of a new organism - to finally emerge as the butterfly.
