Monarch Butterfly Caterpillars

by Joel
(Sydney, Australia)

22nd September, 2009

Monarch Butterfly Life Cycle:

First the Monarch butterfly caterpillar comes out of its egg. Then it eats a lot of Milkweed. Then it moults and eats a lot more and it does this moult a few times. When it is about seven to eight centimetres long, it hangs upside down and attaches itself to the branch or other surface (One caterpillar is attached to the bottom of our kitchen drawer; Another one is underneath a kitchen chair!).

After about a day or two the exoskeleton peels off and a soft green chrysalis appears. We saw this happen to our monarch butterfly caterpillar on the 22nd of September, 2009.

This hardens in one or two hours and later turns turns dark bluish green. When it breaks open a beautiful monarch butterfly comes out of its chrysalis and flies away. When the days gets colder it will fly to a warmer place and lay its eggs there on a milk weed plant and sometimes the baby of those eggs will fly to the exact plant the mother or father came from. Monarch butterflies can live for different amounts of time from 6-8 weeks to 6-8 months depending on where the monarch caterpillars are born and the time of the year.

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