If you’ve seen my earlier posts (I list them at the bottom for you, with links), you know that a monarch butterfly visited our garden and left several eggs on our milkweed. We brought the eggs in and when the caterpillars emerged, we fed them. I haven’t posted many photos of the caterpillars – but I promise I’ll do a blog post about them. For now, I’m too excited and want to show you what happens when a caterpillar pupates. We’ve had several do so already, and I couldn’t get photos of them, so I was glad to see that this fellow –
was right in front of the cage, and looking for a spot to form his “J” -that’s when they attach themselves securely to a surface so they can hang down and pupate.
He hung like that for several hours, then all of a sudden I noticed that he had straightened out.
He was starting to transform! His larval skin split, starting at his head – which is at the bottom.
The skin kept splitting higher.
Finally the larval skin was all crumpled at the top. It fell off a second after I took this photo.
The chrysalid twists and turns violently during the entire process, which is one reason some of the photos are not completely in focus.
After the skin fell off, he twisted and turned a bit more. He will contract in size, and the outer surface of the chrysalis will smooth out. The time from when he relaxed down from the “J” until I took the last photo was only 9 minutes! I don’t have a photo of him in his final chrysalis form, but this is one of the others that turned yesterday:
I feel so lucky to be able to experience this miracle firsthand, I hope you enjoyed the photos!
These are my other posts about the monarch who laid the eggs, and the caterpillars:
Garden Delights Arts & Crafts blog 