FROM EGG TO CATERPILLAR TO BUTTERFLY

A butterfly’s life cycle is made up of four parts:

1. EGG (OVUM)

A female butterfly can lay more than 100 eggs. She detects a possible host plant and tastes the leaves with her feet to ensure it is the correct plant before attaching the eggs with an adhesive fluid. The caterpillars will hatch within a week or two.

2. CATERPILLAR (LAVA)

The butterfly larva is also known as a caterpillar. Its eats its own weight in leaf material every day. As the caterpillar grows it will fill its skin tightly and moult about four times until it sheds for the final time.

3. CHRYSALIS (PUPA)

The caterpillar starts an amazing transformation and pupates. It sheds its final caterpillar skin to reveal a chrysalis underneath. The caterpillar attaches itself to a twig or leaf and forms a chrysalis around itself. This chrysalis is a hard shell encasing the caterpillar as it undergoes its metamorphosis into an adult butterfly. The caterpillar’s tissues and cells break down inside the chrysalis and the adult butterfly structures are formed. This last chrysalis stage can last weeks, months and sometimes years, depending on environmental conditions.

4. BUTTERFLY

The newly formed adult butterfly emerges when the final stages are complete, and the conditions are right. Its wings are soft, velvety, pliable and filled with veins. The butterfly pumps its haemolymph (butterfly blood) into its wings until they expand to their full size. It takes a few hours for its wings to dry before the butterfly is ready to take flight.

DID YOU KNOW?

The butterfly has a long straw-like structure called a proboscis, which unfurls during feeding. When emerged the proboscis is in two parallel halves and the butterfly needs to mould them together to make the single long tube to drink nectar from flowers. The butterfly has six legs, two large compound eyes with a large visual field and extreme colour vision, and two antennae which help with navigation and detecting the aromas of host plants and prospective mates.