Sometimes you just have to toss aside high-minded considerations like how research Sheds Light on the Human Condition, or Illuminates the Secrets of Life, and simply say, gee, isn’t nature amazing?

The metamorphosis of squishy little caterpillar to magnificent butterfly is so radical that you’d think little could remain of the creature’s previous life. But in a neat paper, scientists are reporting this evening that if a Manduca sexta caterpillar (also known as a tobacco hornworm) learns that a particular odor is followed by an electrical shock—classical Pavlovian conditioning—then the Manduca moth knows to be wary of that odor, too.

The caterpillars learned to avoid the odor—they inched their way down the arm of a Y-shaped contraption that did not have the odor, avoiding the arm that did. Once the caterpillar had morphed into a moth, the moth made the same choice, flying away from the aroma associated with a jolt.

The memory survives the radical transformation of crawling caterpillar to flying moth, the scientists—led by Martha Weiss of Georgetown University—conclude in their paper in the journal PLoS One. It’s the first time anyone has shown that memory can survive metamorphosis in moths or butterflies, an idea that “challenges a broadly-held view of metamorphosis—that the larva essentially turns to soup and its components are entirely rebuilt as a butterfly,” says Weiss. Indeed, the caterpillar’s brain and nervous system are extensively reorganized as it morphs through five caterpillar stages and into a moth, but apparently not enough to destroy the synapses that encode the memory.

And I can’t remember to pick up a carton of milk on my way home.