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.

Nature is “red in tooth and claw,” the poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson, wrote in In Memoriam, A.H.H., and an awful lot of sheep ranchers and cattle are sick and tired of it—so sick and tired that they have pushed the federal government to remove the northern Rocky Mountain gray wolf from the list of endangered species, which the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service did last month.

But there could be a great deal more death as a result—and not only because wolves will once again be fair game for hunters.

The decision to remove the northern gray wolf from has been challenged in court by 11 environment groups. But if it stands, states will take over authority for wolves in the northern Rockies—Wyoming and part of Montana and Idaho—on March 28, which de facto means that wolves will be hunted again.

The wolves’ crime? Being wolves, which many lifelong westerners view as a capital offense in and of itself. The species was wiped out in the lower 48 states, including Yellowstone National Park, in the 19^th and 20^th centuries, surviving only in northern Minnesota and Michigan’s Isle Royale, before being restored to Yellowstone beginning in 1996.

For the study, Berger’s team radio-collared more than 100 fawns in Grand Teton National Park. They compared survival rates in areas with and without wolves. Result: 10 percent of fawns survived in wolf-free/coyote-full zones, while 34 percent survived in areas where wolves were abundant and coyotes scarce.

Federal law allows hunting of wolves that attack livestock, so it’s not as if the animals are getting off scot-free. Last year, 102 wolves were killed. Government trappers killed 63, while citizens killed seven that were chasing or attacking livestock; another four were killed after confirmed livestock losses. The rest were apparently hunted illegally. Wolves killed 75 cattle in 2007, up from 32 in 2006; 27 sheep, up from four; as well as two llamas, 12 goats and three dogs, the Daily Inter Lake reported last week.) If the gray wolf is delisted, Wyoming and Idaho have said, they will launch a hunt to reduce the wolf population by 50 percent and 80 percent, respectively. There are an estimated 300 wolves in Wyoming and 700 in Idaho.