More Caterpillar Pictures

Well, actually these are mostly chrysalis pictures. But, if you're already bored with the caterpillar pictures, you probably won't find these interesting either. I, on the other hand, find the whole egg-caterpillar-chrysalis-butterfly process fascinating, as does my daughter. It's fun to share this experience with her. And that's why there are more pictures.


First, we woke up this morning to find a painted lady butterfly hanging on the side of the enclosure. Later this afternoon we found another one hanging on the side of its split chrysalis. I think the rest will probably make their debut tomorrow morning. Although the literature we received with them said they don't eat the first day, Danielle put some sugar water and fresh cut oranges in with them this evening. One of them flew right down and drank some of the orange. We have to watch Clara carefully around the butterflies when they're fluttering around. In the "wild" Clara loves to chase butterflies and has even snatched one from mid-air once. I didn't think she'd pay any attention to these, but we've caught her watching them a couple times.



I was able to watch our second monarch cat molt for the last time and create his chrysalis. His skin split just under his head and then he wiggled until he pushed it all the way up to the silk button. Once the skin got to the top, the caterpillar wiggled wildly and stuck out it's cremaster post (I've drawn yellow arrows pointing to it) to resecure himself to the silk button before fully shedding his skin. Once he was firmly planted, he flicked the molted skin off so it wouldn't stick to the chrysalis.

Here are some pictures I took. I took a video at the end when he was flicking his skin off. I couldn't get my camera to focus on such a small object for the video, though, so the video is a bit blurry. (This is also why I took pictures instead of taking video of the whole process.) Although it's a little blurry, I think it's interesting because you can see how wildly he's moving.