Musings from a developing parent: April 2014

Monday 28 April 2014

Caterpillar life cycle

We have decided to observe the lifecycle of the butterfly. So we bought a kit from Insectlore, which arrived a few days ago. They are self contained, so they have all their food in a hardened solution on the bottom of the tub which has air holes. At the top, when they are ready, they go up and become chrysalides and hang off the paper disc at the top, which, when they harden, we place directly into their butterfly home ready for them to emerge.

Here is their picture story.

They have arrived

Here they are, only quite small.

Day 2 - here we see most of the caterpillars onto their second exoskeleton and the small one in the middle on its first. The instructions say that this repeats a number of times before they become chrysalides

Day 3

Day 4 - they are getting quite big now, and seem to have formed a complex network of silk threads on top of their food area. There is a large number of displaced parts of food and blobs of black. We have also noticed what looks like a discarded exoskeleton, from the largest of the caterpillars with very clear hairs on it, in a hard ball. Today they were quite active, and Evan and I watched them.for a while. We noticed the suckers on the back legs, of which there appeared to be 5 pairs, they move together in an undulating way. At their front sections which moved around the most, there were 3 pairs. We saw the head weaving around presumably spinning a thread from its spinnerets. We noted no interaction between the caterpillars, but were amused by one caterpillar who seemed to hang out at the top of the container, and when it moved back towards the food, got half way and went back up again. We got our microscope out and managed to see them moving close up, which was pretty scary but fascinating.

Been a bit slack in photo taking, but here are some recent shots

Today - they are simply enormous, and there are plenty of "spent" exoskeletons to show their size. We have particularly been fascinated by their hairs and how their suckers move. It is now more apparent that they move inwards as they walk, and only the back legs have suckers, the front ones appear to be more feelers than movers - more like hands than feet really.

Paddling at Chatsworth

Yes, we kind of live there!!! Also, we are going again tomorrow. We went on Thursday last week with friends again. A lot of tree climbing and paddling was done, and we spent a lot of time looking at the bushes and trees coming into leaf and blossom.