Squashed Moth Pupa releases “Soup”

Subject: Packing the Garage
Location: Arizona
October 27, 2015 10:27 pm
I was packing the garage and saw this on the ground I was kinda scared of it and assumed it was a bad bug like a cockroach sac or something and squished it and was very confused to have green liquid come out. I don’t think there was anything in it so I am worried about what it was.
Signature: Scared of these things

This is a squashed Moth pupa.

Thank you for responding. So that is common for them to have green liquid on the inside?

When a caterpillar undergoes metamorphosis and enters the pupal stage, the interior organs break down into what scientists refer to as “soup” and here is the explanation from Scientific American:  “But what does that radical transformation entail? How does a caterpillar rearrange itself into a butterfly? What happens inside a chrysalis or cocoon?  First, the caterpillar digests itself, releasing enzymes to dissolve all of its tissues. If you were to cut open a cocoon or chrysalis at just the right time, caterpillar soup would ooze out. But the contents of the pupa are not entirely an amorphous mess. Certain highly organized groups of cells known as imaginal discs survive the digestive process. ”