Why is it that when installing gulp, not only gulp is downloaded locally, but so much more?

Question

gulp.js

When executing the command npm install --save-dev gulp, not only gulp is downloaded to the node_modules folder, but about 100 modules are also downloaded:

Answer 1

Because gulp depends on these modules, it needs them to work.

Answer 2

I have the same parsley! It looks like this is due to the new version of node. Previously, there were only those folders identical to the names of the installed modules.