Stage one, above is the Monarch Caterpillar or Larval! This caterpillar is still eating and growing, it just shed it's skin today. Jacob watched it and said "did it's head fall off?"
Here on the left you see one of them has attached to the top and began the process of turning into a butterfly! They have eight pairs of legs, the first 3 pair will become the butterfly's legs, the last pair they use to attach themselves to the top of a safe place (tin foil is safe right), by making a silk mat. The caterpillar then lets itself drop and hang making itself into a J-shape, for about a full day!
Until a hard jade green casting (chrysalis) is formed, it is soft first then becomes hard to protect the butterfly inside. By tomorrow he will look like his friend on the right! AMAZING, now we need to wait another week or so for the butterflies. I am going to take it to Jacob's school tomorrow for him! How lucky were we to find that large patch of milkweed!
NEW ASSIGNMENT! INSECTS, study them, take pictures of them, learn about the gross things! Insect: noun, look it up! Okay maybe not a good assignment, but hey the butterflies are cool! Who is picking??? BRENT? AMANDA?
1 comment:
I HATE bugs! Yuck. That shot of the grashopper a few weeks ago, was as close as I really wanted to get. We did the whole caterpillar/butterfly thing back in July. We started with 6 caterpillars and only one died, so we ended up with 5 butterflies to let free. It was fun, but sorry, no pictures.
Post a Comment