Butterfly Life Cycle Quiz
Egg and caterpillar
A butterfly's life begins as a tiny egg, laid on a plant that the young will be able to eat. Monarch butterflies, for example, lay their eggs only on milkweed.
Out of the egg comes a caterpillar, which is the butterfly's larva. Its first meal is often its own eggshell. After that it does almost nothing but eat, and it can grow to many times its starting size in just a few weeks.
A caterpillar's skin can't stretch very far, so it molts, shedding its old skin about four or five times as it grows. Each stage between molts is called an instar.
Inside the chrysalis
When the caterpillar is fully grown, it finds a safe spot, often hanging upside down, and sheds its skin one last time to reveal a hard case called a chrysalis. This is the pupa stage. Many moths spin a silk cocoon around themselves instead.
Inside, something remarkable happens. Most of the caterpillar's body breaks down into a kind of soup, and small groups of cells that were waiting inside it all along build the wings, legs, eyes and other parts of the adult.
For many butterflies this takes about one to two weeks, though some species wait out the whole winter in the chrysalis.
The adult butterfly
When the butterfly breaks out, its wings are crumpled and wet. It pumps fluid into their veins to spread them out, then waits for them to dry before it can fly.
Adults drink nectar through a long tube called a proboscis, which stays coiled up when not in use. They taste with sensors on their feet. Most adults live only a few weeks, just long enough to mate and lay eggs, though the monarchs that migrate to Mexico can live for about eight months.
These four stages, egg, larva, pupa and adult, make up what scientists call complete metamorphosis.