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Growth of Butterfly
How does a butterfly grow from an egg? 🦋
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A butterfly takes about 4 stages to finally develop into a full grown butterfly from an egg.
Stage 1 : Egg
All butterflies start as tiny eggs—each about the size of a pin—that female butterflies deposit on leaves in small clusters. Eggs typically gestate for about a week or two, at which point they hatch into butterfly larva.
Stage 2 : Larva
Almost all insect species go through larval stages. Butterfly larvae—more commonly known as caterpillars.
Caterpillars are consuming grass, leaves, and other plant material as they grow up to 1,000 times their original birth weight. While some species binge and blow up in just a few weeks, others take longer to develop. The wood-eating Carpenter Worm is actually a caterpillar that can take as long as three years to grow out of its larval state.
No matter how long it takes, each caterpillar is eating to prepare for the next stage in its life cycle, when it will put those calories to use to power a startling transformation.
Stage 3: Pupa
The next stage of a butterfly’s life cycle takes place inside a chrysalis, the last expression of the caterpillar’s exoskeleton. The caterpillar will break down entirely on a cellular level, and then reorganize itself into a new form. The result is an adult butterfly that emerges from exoskeleton after a period of several weeks.
Stage 4: Adulthood
Adult butterflies leave behind their chrysalis and take to the air on their new wings. Once they reach this stage of life, butterflies spend most of their time around flowers.