Is it an egg or cocoon?

As I ventured into the vermiculture world, one thing that seemed very obvious to me was that worm people spoke a different language and that the language had to be correct. One of these new vocabulary words was the “cocoon”.

Worms reproduce via a cocoon. Or at least that’s how the story goes. After reading about how this happens and finding my first “cocoons”, I wondered, why isn’t this called an egg? It looks like an egg. The worms emerging from the cocoon didn’t go in as worms and come out for the “rebirth” as butterflies, or sprout any wings, legs, or otherwise. In fact, it wasn’t a rebirth at all. I thought, “I am going to fight this! I am going to get the worm cocoon reclassed as an egg!” The problem with thinking is that I shouldn’t do too much of it, because I was wrong.

Just because my knowledge of cocoons is based solely on the caterpillar does not mean I am an expert on cocoons. My raising chickens or 40 some years of breakfast didn’t make me an expert on eggs either. Luckily before I began my crusade, I looked up the two words in the dictionary.

Cocoon: The silky envelope spun by the larvae of many insects, as silkworms, serving as a covering while they are in the pupal stage or any of various similar protective coverings in nature, as the silky case in which certain spiders enclose their eggs.

Egg: The roundish reproductive body produced by the female of certain animals, as birds and most reptiles, consisting of an ovum and its envelope of albumen, jelly, membranes, egg case, or shell, according to species.

Since the “object in question” serves as a protection to the fertilized eggs, and is made by the parent and because the “object in question” does not come exclusively from the female (since there isn’t one), the “object in question” must be a cocoon.

I will have to make my stand elsewhere!