Jake and the Migration
of the Monarch

* Growing Butterflies *

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Imagine seeing a butterfly as it emerges from its chrysalis! You can observe this incredible mystery of life – the metamorphosis of a butterfly – by feeding caterpillars and watching them complete their life cycle.

Materials:
A butterfly house. This can be any transparent closed structure: an aquarium with a lid, a box with a transparent viewing area, or a net butterfly house. Several butterfly houses are available in catalogs, or you can make your own.

Add caterpillar and plant stems with leaves from the caterpillar’s host plants. Put aluminum foil over the top of a water container, so the caterpillars don’t fall into the water and drown. Poke the plant stems through the aluminum foil and into the water.

Procedure:

1. Place the container with the host plant leaves in the butterfly house. Be sure to keep fresh leaves for the caterpillar to eat, because it gets its food and water from the leaves. Replace dry leaves immediately, or the caterpillar will die!
2. Carefully place the caterpillar on the leaves. It will grab the leaves with its back “suction feet.” Observe the caterpillar as it eats and grows. It will shed its skin several times as it grows.
3. After the butterfly emerges from its chrysalis, it will dry off and inflate its wings. It will not eat for the first six – twelve hours. To feed it, put fresh flowers (from a nectar source list) in with the butterfly or dip a cotton ball in a sugar water solution of four parts water and one part sugar. Place the cotton ball in a Petri dish or jar lid with sides. If the butterfly does not drink, carefully place it on the cotton ball by pinching its two wings together above its body. You can observe it unrolling its long tongue, which is called a proboscis. The butterfly sucks nectar through the proboscis like you would drink through a straw. After drinking, it rolls the long, thin, black proboscis back up.
4. After two or three days, release the butterfly outdoors.

Background Information
The butterfly lays her eggs on a plant called a “host plant.” This is a plant she knows her caterpillars will eat, because she ate it when she was a caterpillar. Caterpillars are very picky eaters. Most eat only one or two kinds of leaves. Therefore, you must NEVER take a caterpillar into captivity unless you know what leaves it eats! It will starve if it doesn’t have the particular leaves that it eats.

When a caterpillar is about to form its chrysalis, it often attaches itself to a plant stem or the top of a cage and hangs upside down in the form of a “J.” Then it sheds its skin for the last time, and you see the chrysalis. A Monarch’s chrysalis begins as a beautiful yellow green color with some beautiful gold specks around the top edges. After a few days it turns brown. It may look dead, but it’s not! You may even observe it moving. When the Monarch is ready to emerge, the chrysalis becomes transparent and you can see the black and orange on its wings.