How Does a Caterpillar Turn Into a Butterfly?

Video Transcript

"From every stage of a butterfly it pretty much never hatches except when it comes out of it's egg. So every time a caterpillar grows, or makes a chrysalides or cocoon, or becomes a butterfly it is actually shedding it's skin. So a caterpillar is the larva form and the feeding form of a butterfly. So a butterfly will lay an egg, and the egg will sit for five to seven days, then the caterpillar will chew it's way out of the egg. That is considered hatching. After that it is molting, so the caterpillar is going to feed, and it has five instars. Which it hatches from the egg, that's the first instar, it will loaf four times, and five stages called instars. At the last state it will get to the largest it will get, and it will the hormones in it will change, and it will form a pupae underneath it's skin or a chrysalides. And it will attach itself either upside down or it will make a little lasso, and it will sit there for about twenty-four to forty-eight hours, molt, shed it's skin again, and become a chrysalides underneath. The chrysalides is actually the biggest change, the biggest physiological change between caterpillar to butterfly happens when it becomes a chrysalides. And the chrysalides is basically a mold of the butterfly. If you look at any chrysalides you will see the wings, the head, the antennas, the tongue, the abdomen, thorax. And what will happen is that will sit anywhere from five days, seven days, to eight months depending on the time of year it is, because some of them spend the winter that way. And then the butterfly will hatch out in back. But it is not actually hatching it's molting, it's called eclosing."