Entymology 101: Study in Butterflies

After receiving a Butterfly Pavilion from some of our friends who are clearly interested in the entymological education of our children, we took the first step towards obtaining butterflies of our very own: we sent away for caterpillars.

A few weeks later they arrived in two cups. There were five caterpillars in each cup, which had "caterpillar food" on the bottom of the cups. After a week or two, the caterpillars made their way to the top of the cups, hung upside-down from the lids, and spun cocoons.

Once the chrysalids, or cocoons, were safely established, we took the lids off the cups and pinned them to the inside top of the Butterfly Pavilion. (You can see the two white round lids at the top of the photo below.) One new thing we learned is that the caterpillars will actually wiggle inside the cocoon, to make it appear to tremble, as a way to ward off predators while in their vulnerable state. When they were first moved from the cups to the Pavilion, they were shaking like crazy!
After about one week in the cocoons, the butterflies began to emerge. On Friday night, just as the girls were going to bed, I looked up at the Pavilion on the top of their dresser and said, "We have a butterfly!" The first Painted Lady had emerged. Saturday morning we all gathered around the Pavilion to watch the cocoons, anxious to see another butterfly come out. We watched for 10-15 minutes and then went to the kitchen to eat breakfast. An hour or two later, I was back in their room and discovered four more butterflies! We had missed them all, and would miss every other one emerging...until Sunday morning.

As we were getting ready for church, I went into the girls' room and saw the final butterfly emerging from its chrysalis, which was actually sitting on the floor of the Pavilion. (It had come off the lid and, as per the directions, we had carefully placed it on a paper towel.) I hollered and the whole family came running down the hall. We lifted up the girls and watched the butterfly wiggle it's way out of the cocoon, using its legs to push it off. Its wings were tiny and eventually unfolded a little bit more as it sat opening and closing them. AMAZING!

The whole family was fascinated with the butterflies. Below you can see Damon and Gunnar peering into the Pavilion as Maggie reaches inside. Even now, Gunnar's ears perk up when he hears someone say "butterfly."

Hanging outside for some fresh air, one butterfly perches on Maggie's fingers. Adah named several of the butterflies. Among them were, Crazy, Silent, Quiet, B-B, and Butter on Bread. (I think that last one sounds like a racehorse, don't you?)

After about a week, we decided to release the butterflies. Their life span is about 1-2 weeks and I wasn't prepared to deal with dead butterflies in our Pavilion. I wanted them to have some time to fly in the wild before the end of their short lives. (Plus I was a little nervous that we weren't feeding them correctly and didn't want to feel guilty about an early demise.)

It was a fascinating learning experience for our family. We shared some of it with Adah's kindergarten class. They kept a cup of caterpillars until they reached the vulnerable chrysalis stage. Then we took the hatched butterflies one morning to show the class. Adah's teacher and classmates were delighted.

We will definitely order more caterpillars and go through the process again.