Fourth instar Monarch Butterfly caterpillars are about an inch long 1. Fifth instar Monarch Butterfly caterpillars have quite a fancy pattern of black, white, and green-yellow stripes, with long black tentacles and white-dotted black legs. For North American caterpillars they are very large, 2. They can now eat a small milkweed leaf in minutes, or a big milkweed leaf, big enough to fold into a roomy case around them, in less than a day.
After a few days at this stage they finally fill up, stop eating, and look for a place to pupate. Monarch Butterflies do not spin cocoons. They spin a little mat of silk on the underside of a branch, then hang upside down by their hindmost pair of legs the claspers in a J position.
Within a day the striped skin falls off, exposing a green chrysalis that looks more like a bead than like a living animal. At last the adult butterfly crawls out of the chrysalis. Pulling itself slowly out of this last discarded skin, then waiting and pumping its wet, crumpled wings, are necessary parts of its development. After emergence, Monarch Butterflies usually wait up to twelve hours, or more, before their wings are ready for flight. Monarch Butterfly wings will carry the butterfly through anywhere from fifteen to fifty days of adult life.
Between March and May, this generation of Monarchs will flit about looking for unused milkweed plants where their offspring will find adequate food. Many, though not all, will move north, following the weather into the Northern States. Monarchs who hatch in April and May go through the same stages as those who hatch in February and March.
Between May and July, some of them will lay eggs on milkweed plants in Canada. Monarchs who hatch in June and July go through the same stages as the earlier generations. As they fly, in July through September, slightly shorter days and cooler nights motivate them to move southward. Butterflies who hatched in Canada usually lay eggs in the Northern States.
In the Middle Atlantic States, some people like to prune back milkweed plants where Monarch Butterfly eggs are not hatching in July, so these plants will have fresh new leaves for the fourth generation of Monarch Butterfly caterpillars to eat after hatching in August or September. Monarchs who hatch in August and September begin to fly in September and October. This is the generation that may fly across the Gulf of Mexico.
There is an average life span of a butterfly - it is usually about one month. Although the smallest butterflies that you can usually spot feasting on the flowers in your front yard will usually only live about one week.
Mourning Cloaks, some tropical Heliconians, and Monarchs are some of the only butterflies that have an average life span of about nine months. Now as many of you know, butterflies are cold-blooded creatures, so there is another factor to take into consideration when you are dealing with butterflies; the climate.
For instance, if the butterfly egg has been laid just before the cold weather hits, the egg will stay in egg-form until the weather warms and as soon as it does, the caterpillar will hatch and everything will start again.
They rest with eyes open, typically hidden amid the foliage and hanging upside down from leaves or twigs in trees and shrubs. At night, they drowse in evergreen and broad-leaved trees and shrubs, fallen leaves, pieces of bark, or in a rock crevice or brush pile equipped with many nooks and crannies. Do butterflies hibernate in winter? Some butterflies go through a cycle of suspended development -- a hibernation period known as diapause. For example, most swallowtails hibernate as chrysalides while the American painted ladies hibernate as adults.
The blood of some butterfly species contains natural antifreeze agents -- glycerol and sorbitol -- which allow them to live in certain stages of their life cycle during subfreezing temperatures.
During this period, their development comes to a standstill and vital functions are kept at bare minimum. What do butterflies eat? Most adult butterflies prefer sipping nectar from any flower they can access. The type of flower a butterfly visits depends on the length of the butterfly's tubelike tongue, called a proboscis. A butterfly's tongue functions much like a flexible straw, uncoiling when it's ready to sip sweet nectar from a flower.
The tongue recoils back into position when not in use. Some species, such as red admirals and mourning cloaks, rarely visit flowers. Instead they seek out sap flows on trees, as well as pollen, fermenting fruit, bird droppings and dung. While adult butterflies will feed from a wide variety of nectar flowers, caterpillars typically have very specialized diets. For instance, plants in the mallow family are favored by the west coast lady and the common checkered-skipper caterpillars, while monarch caterpillars feed solely on milkweed.
Most caterpillars dine on specific plants, usually on the leaves, though some species do eat seeds, seedpods or flowers. Why are butterfly wings so colorful? The rich patterns and vivid colors come from layers of thousands of tiny scales, most of which are produced by pigments. Each scale is composed of a single color. The scales protect the wings, and the overall color patterns protect the butterfly from predators.
These color patterns act as camouflage of sorts, especially on the underside of the wing, enabling the butterfly to blend in with its environment.
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