With all of the excitement over our baby Robins I completely forgot to update you on how our butterfly larvae was doing! So I'm going to recap what happened since we have raised and set them free already :) Calling them hungry is an understatement, try starving! All day long they munched and crunched, so loud in fact that they could be heard clear across the other side of the room. On top of their little food container they came in was a piece of breathable woven mesh type fabric separating them from the lid and one of the little rascals or maybe it was more than one actually chewed holes through the material resulting in one escapee.
Do you know how a caterpillar chews? By opening and closing its jaws just like a pair of scissors!
As our caterpillars ate and grew their skin did not grow with them and grew tight. To tight in fact that they had to 'molt' or shed their skin and a new skin would form. And each time our caterpillars molted they grew twice their size and then they would molt again! Do you know what a caterpillar does with the skin that it sheds? It eats it! It is full of good nutrients that help the caterpillar grow. The stage in between molts is called an 'instar' and during this time they continue to eat like crazy. On average a caterpillar goes through 4 different stages of molting.
The above photo is just about 10 days after they arrived at our home. They had just began to get ready for their last and final molt. When a caterpillar is ready to form it's 'pupa' or 'chrysalis' it finds a nice place to hang upside down, and from out of it's spinneret it shoots sticky silk (just like a spider) creating a little button from which it sticks its abdomen to. Once they were all ready, having glued themselves to the top of their little home they began their last molt by splitting open their skin and from underneath their 'pupa' formed.
Their skin splits right in half from top to bottom and the 'pupa' appears and becomes a hard protective shell for the caterpillar to change into a butterfly. The caterpillar actually turns into a liquid inside of the 'pupa' as it's body re-organizes itself into the butterfly that it will emerge as. They are very strange looking to. Look ours has spikes on it!
Did you know that caterpillars don't see very well? They can only see light and shadows through their clusters of eyes. Another interesting bit of info about caterpillars is that once they have formed their pupa sometimes you can see movement from inside of it! This happens if they get bumped or moved. They can actually startle and means that they are in tune with what is happening around them. Isn't that neat!
Make sure you check back for the last update on our caterpillars when the emerge from their pupas as butterflies.
