Jul 18 2020

Caterpillar Updates

The big caterpillar who was hanging in J has now shed its last exoskeleton and hardened into a chrysalis. My friend named it Daphne which is a character who undergoes a metamorphosis in her Greek myth. There’s no way to know whether the caterpillar is male or female until it emerges as a butterfly, but I think even if it’s a male, the name Daphne is just fine.

In the picture you can clearly still see the white silk button which is holding the chrysalis to the mesh lid of the enclosure. You can also see the limb that the caterpillar used to attach itself to the button, called the cremaster. It’s more obvious now. It looks like a little stem. The butterfly parts have actually already been generated in there, and are going to take the next 8-12 days or so to mature. From this angle, you can see the abdomen (stomach) of the butterfly above the black line. The faint lines are already there.

After the first week, I will start checking on the chrysalis daily to look for a color change. Right now the chrysalis is bright green. Once its metamorphosis begins to come to an end, it will begin to darken until eventually the chrysalis looks completely black, and then for a few hours you will be able to see the pattern of the wings right through the chrysalis walls.

Once he or she is ready, he will force its way out of the chrysalis and then drop down to hang from it. They do this so that they can pump all the fluid from its body into its wings, making them expand, and then the rest of the fluid will drip off so that the butterfly can be light enough to fly. That process takes several hours but hopefully I will catch it in time to take photos! In my experience, they do this at really weird hours and I almost always miss it. I usually just wake up to a whole butterfly in the enclosure ready to take flight.

As for the babies… unfortunately it appears that only two of them survived hatching. This is pretty normal. They die for many reasons and most of the reasons are unknown. I’ve even had caterpillars wander off of the plants completely and not be able to find their way back. As much as I do to help them, sometimes they just don’t make it… and that’s okay. I’m still doing them a favor by providing them with food and shelter because I can make sure it’s not a predator that gets to them.

Most of my friends do not count how many eggs they bring in or how many newly hatched caterpillars they have. They are too small and too unstable. Most of my friends wait until the caterpillars are about as big as mine are now.

I used the end of a pencil here to give you an idea about how big the caterpillars are. From nose to buns, this caterpillar is about as long as a pencil eraser! The other caterpillar in the picture at the top of the left leaf is a tiny bit smaller.

These are the the leafs their eggs were laid on. You can see especially on the leaf the pencil is touching that the caterpillars have made good progress eating their way through that food source! When I raise from eggs, I always leave the eggs I found leafs on in the enclosure for as long as possible in case there are tiny little caterpillars that I didn’t see. Since I have the leafs in a condiment cup with water, they are still fresh for the caterpillars for now. The water is getting a little bit cruddy now, which is fine because over the next day or two I will add fresh food for them. I just like to know for sure that there are no baby caterpillars hiding out in the old leaves before I take them out. 🙂

I will probably wait a week or so for the next update. The caterpillars are going to spend most of the next three weeks eating, growing, shedding, and repeating until they get as big as the other caterpillar I found! They have an exoskeleton which means they don’t have bones — their structure is formed from their outer skin which gives them shape and protection. (Also why they are unfortunately so easy to squish.) When they get too big for their outer skin, they shed it and form a new one that gives them some room to grow. Think of it like how you got a new pair of shoes every year when you were a kid, because your feet kept growing. Each shed or molt marks the end of one part of their growth cycle, called an instar. These caterpillars are in their first instar. I will try to post an update when they move on to their second. Until then, it’s just a waiting game!

I'm waiting

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