[upbeat music] - Hello there and welcome to the Memphis Zoo here in the city of Memphis, Tennessee.

My name is Bella and I'm an animal interpreter here at the zoo.

As an animal interpreter, my job involves a lot of different things, but one of my favorite things about my job is getting to teach people just like you all about how important animals are.

In fact, today I wanted to share with you one of the most amazing things that both we and animals can do, transform.

Just like you and me, animals change throughout their lives.

You started out as a baby, right?

And now look at you!

Changes are happening all around us.

How does a caterpillar become a beautiful butterfly?

How do octopus change color?

Where do flamingos get their pink color from?

We'll cover that and more on our adventure today.

Let's get started.

First of all, what does it mean to transform?

Well, if you look at the word, trans means change and form means shape, so transform means to change shape.

Transformation happens when one thing becomes another.

When you were a baby, what did you look like?

You maybe had a smaller body than you do now and you can probably do more things now than you could as a baby.

As you grow older, you'll transform even more, but let's look at some other animals that take transformation to a whole different level.

Some animals go through a very big change called metamorphosis.

Metamorphosis is another word that means to transform or change shape.

Lots of animals go through metamorphosis or this special change.

Let's explore some.

Have you ever gone for a walk outside and seen a caterpillar or maybe you've seen one in a book?

Caterpillars are the larval or baby version of another animal.

Can you guess what caterpillars transform into?

Good guess!

Caterpillars actually become butterflies.

Have you ever seen a butterfly fluttering through a patch of flowers before?

They look so different from caterpillars.

Butterfly metamorphosis happens in four stages, meaning they go through four changes.

They start as an egg, like a chicken egg, but a lot smaller.

Then they hatch out of that egg and become a caterpillar.

Caterpillars have lots of legs and spend all of their time eating to grow big and strong.

Once they're big enough, they start another change and are called a pupa, which is where they sit in a chrysalis and change again.

The chrysalis is kind of like a warm cozy blanket that protects them while they change.

After they're done changing, kind of like how you might change clothes, they come out of the chrysalis blanket and are the beautiful butterflies we know and love.

Butterflies are much different from caterpillars.

Do you see any differences?

Butterflies have beautiful wings.

While caterpillars are much better at crawling around on leaves.

You also might not be able to see it, but their mouths are very different too.

As caterpillars, they have mouths like ours that are good at chewing up leaves.

When they become butterflies, their mouths turn into something called a proboscis, which is basically a straw.

It's great for slurping up plant nectar instead of chewing those leaves.

Do you remember all four stages of butterfly's life?

Let's review.

First they start as an egg.

Then they become a caterpillar.

After that, they become a pupa in their chrysalis, nice and protected before becoming an adult butterfly.

That's a lot of change for such a small creature, but it's not the only way animals transform.

In fact, I have a friend that might be able to help us see a different type of change.

This is my friend Charming and he is a toad.

Just like butterflies, toads and frogs go through a metamorphosis or big change.

Let's take a closer look.

Just like the butterfly, a toad stared as an egg.

When they hatch out of that egg, they are a baby toad called a tadpole or a polliwog.

They have a tail that helps them swim in the water and special gills, which are like lungs that breathe underwater.

Just like the caterpillar, the tadpole spends most of their time eating away.

They munch and munch and munch, and while they're munching, they grow bigger.

As they get bigger and grow more, the tadpole starts to lose their tail.

It gets smaller and eventually goes away entirely.

They also start to grow lungs like us, which helps them to breathe air instead of water.

Once their tail is gone and they can breathe air, they are an adult known as a toad, like my friend Charming.

So just like butterflies, the toad starts as an egg, then becomes a baby toad.

Do you remember what that's called?

A tadpole!

Instead of a chrysalis like a butterfly though, tadpoles just keep growing until they become an adult toad.

That's a little more like us except for the tail part.

Wouldn't it be so cool if we had tails though?

Sometimes change isn't always easy to see in animals.

Change isn't always about growing up, but it can be just as interesting.

In fact, one of my favorite animals changes every day.

They don't grow but instead, change their color.

One animal that changes color is the octopus.

They can change the color of their skin, special parts of their skin change color so that they can communicate with or talk to other octopus.

Picture this, you're feeling super happy today and you'd like to make some new friends.

Instead of asking someone to play, you paint yourself green.

Green might mean that you would like to meet someone new and everyone else knows that, so they also paint themselves green.

If you see someone else that's painted green, you know you can play with them today.

If they're painted a different color, it might mean that they don't want to play or that they need to do something else.

This is kind of what octopus are doing all the time, minus the paint.

Another animal that changes color is the flamingo, but it's not quite the same as an octopus.

While we think of flamingo as bright pink, they don't start out that way.

They're actually gray when they first hatch.

Their diet or what they eat is what helps them change color.

Flamingos eat pink colored food like shrimps so much that they turn pink.

It would be like you eating carrots every day, you'd turn orange, imagine that!

While metamorphosis and color changing are super amazing ways that animals transform, there are some other ways that animals transform that look a little bit more like how we change as we grow up.

Let's look at puppies and kittens, for example.

When puppies are born, they are small.

As they grow up and get bigger, they turn into dogs.

Kittens do the same thing, turning into cats.

The transformation might seem less exciting, but it's a transformation, to be sure.

What about an animal that looks even more like us, like an orangutan?

They start as a baby orangutan, just like a baby human.

The adult orangutan takes care of them until they grow big and strong enough to be an adult themselves.

Baby orangutans are pretty cute too, just like baby humans.

As we saw today, there are so many different ways that we can transform or change shapes.

First, we spent some time in the garden with our butterfly friends.

Do you remember what their transformation is called?

Metamorphosis.

We also looked at another animal that goes through metamorphosis, toads.

Do you remember what a baby toad is called?

A tadpole.

Other than metamorphosis, there are other changes that animals go through.

We saw how animals can change color.

Can you name one of the animals that changes color?

Octopus and flamingos are pretty good examples.

After having some fun with colors, we took a look at some animals that are a little more like us.

When we learn about animals, we realize we are just like them.

We all change throughout our lives.

How have you changed throughout your life?

I know that I've grown a whole lot taller since I was a baby and that's just one way that I've changed.

Thank you for joining me at the Memphis Zoo today and learning all about transformation.

Have a great day!