It must be kept alive to provide fresh meat for the growing wasp larva feeding inside. And the larva, for its part, takes care to eat the internal organs in a judicious order. It begins by taking out the fat bodies and digestive organs, leaving the vital heart and nervous system till last – they are necessary, you see, to keep the caterpillar alive. As Darwin so poignantly wondered, what kind of beneficent designer would have dreamed that up? I don’t know whether caterpillars can feel pain. I devoutly hope not. But what I do know is that natural selection would in any case take no steps to
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