Life Cycle of the Butterfly

Stage I - Cracks from the egg and becomes a caterpiller.

When the caterpiller hatches, its first meal is the egg shell itself It lives on leaves and other green vegetation. It can grow up to 30,000 times original size. When it is big and plump, it is ready to become a pupa.

Stage 2 - Wants to become a pupa and builds a chrysalis.

The chrysalis has twelve stages of development. The first 5 stages are just becomming the FULL chrysalis. The final 7 stages are developing into the actual butterfly. Once it has reached stage twelve, it will come out of the chrysalis, flying in the open.

The butterfly emerges from the chrysalis after going through twelve stages of development. Click on this graphic for more information and photographs.

Stage 3 - Emerges as a beautiful, colorful butterfly.

The butterfly is now in the great open spaces of the world. They either live a couple of days, 20 days, 40 days and could even go up to 6 months. After one of these periods of time

Stage 4 - Dies.

(Here is a site with more information on the Life Cycle of the Butterfly.)

Monarchs & Peacock Butterflies

It is amazing that butterflies can fly so far. For example, the Peacock Butterfly can fly all the way to the West Coast of the United States from Europe. This butterfly is one of those summer butterflies because it is attracted to the sun. It is also attracted to brightly colored flowers. It lives in the southern part of Europe in countries like Spain and Portugal.

The butterflies' wings must be
very strong for such long migrations.

Flight

Butterflies can fly thousands and thousands of kilometers. They can fly from Canada through the United States down to Mexico. They can also fly from the US to Mexico, Canada and back to the US and they can even fly from America to Europe That must take a lot of energy to do that! The butterflies' wings must be very strong if they can do that!