Monday, May 19, 2008

Butterfly/Moth Life Cycles

Lately, I noticed lot of black stuffs (or you can also call it droppings) around my plant. So i decided to check it out. To my surprise, i found not one but 3 green caterpillars happily munching on the leaves of my plant.




As you can see from the picture above.... they are really fat and juicy!

I decided to keep them and see if they will really turn into a beautiful butterfly....also can use them as a educational tools to teach the girls on butterfly life cycle. But then....my husband insists that it looks more like a moth :(












So day and night we have been feeding them and cleaning them cos they really have lot and lots of dropping.














There are altogether 4 stages in the life cycle of a butterfly.

1) Egg :
The female attaches the egg to leaves, stems, or other objects, usually on or near the intended caterpillar food.

2) Caterpillar :
is the long, worm-like stage of the butterfly or moth. It often has an interesting pattern of stripes or patches but ours seems to have no patterns except bright green in color.
Here is the feeding and growth stage. As it grows, it sheds its skin four or more times so as to enclose its rapidly growing body. Day and night, they just munch....munch....and munch...
.


3) Chrysalis :
is the transformation stage within which the caterpillar tissues are broken down and the adult insect's structures are formed.

4) Butterfly/Moth




On average it can live up from 6-8 weeks, but when it reaches adulthood, it will spread its beautiful wings and launch out to do God's work, pollination flowers, so that the flowers can grow fruits. Also showing to the world and letting it admire it beautiful colors that God has painted on their wings.

Will gives more updates to our "project".



2 comments:

Rachel said...

That's definately a very good teaching tools! I'm sure they will remember the cycle for life!

Ray said...

So Interesting!