"How does one become a butterfly?" she asked. "You must want to fly so much that you are willing to give up being a caterpillar." ~ Anonymous
Yesterday I volunteered at the 3rd Annual Butterfly Festival at the Panhandle Butterfly House in Navarre. My station was the second stop in the Life Cycle of a butterfly; namely, the caterpillar. We had three different caterpillars on display--the black swallowtail, the orange barred sulphur and the Monarch caterpillars, like the two below.
These two Monarch caterpillars are hungrily munching away on a Milkweed plant, their host plant. The job of the caterpillar is to eat and eat and eat. As the caterpillar grows it splits its skin and sheds it about 4 or 5 times. Food eaten at this time is stored and used later as an adult. Caterpillars can grow 100 times their size during this stage. For example, a monarch butterfly egg is the size of a pinhead and the caterpillar that hatches from this tiny egg isn't much bigger. But it will grow up to 2 inches long in several weeks.
Monarch egg on leaf
Newly hatched caterpillar
Looking for more food. Soon this caterpillar will be ready for the next stage of its life--the chrysalis stage. Then it will emerge from the chrysalis as a lovely Monarch Butterfly.
Monarch Chrysalis
The last three pictures are not mine, but were included from reference sources for visual clarity.
Wonderful post. Butterflies are fascinating. They are disappearing here :-(.
ReplyDeleteGreat post and information. Thanks for sharing. Sounds like you learned a lot.
ReplyDeleteHello Baysidelife.
ReplyDeleteI like very much to capture in photo the butterflies, they are a rare beauty, and your photos are very interesting, with a good information, about it, a nice post, thank´s for sharing.
My compliments, all the best, have a nice day, see you soon.
José Filipe 15-10-2009
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