There are MILLIONS of butterflys here now. You can't drive a block in any direction and not kill a bunch of them. I hate that. The poor things. Anyway...on the evening news, one of our bright newscasters said the painted lady butterflys are migrating up from Mexico, headed north. He made it sound like they were going all the way to Canada. What? My goodness, how far can a butterfly fly? In fact, how long does a butterfly live? So I googled Painted Lady Butterfly to see what the truth about them is.
Here you go. A butterfly egg takes 5 to 10 days to hatch into a caterpillar. The caterpillar eats like crazy and will change skin 4 times before it is fully grown. After 3 weeks the hairy, black and yellow caterpillar stops growing and is almost 2 inches long.
The caterpillar finds a safe place to rest and spins a chrysalis. Inside the chrysalis the caterpillar becomes completely liquid and reforms into a butterfly. 2 weeks later the butterfly emerges. The Painted Lady Butterfly has a 2 week life span. During that time, it's main goal is to reproduce and lay eggs so the cycle can begin again!
From start to finish that's about a 6 week ordeal. After watching these things flitting around here I figure it must take quite a few generations to make it north. I guess they look so frenzied in their flitting about because they know their time is running out and they haven't finished their bucket list.
4 comments:
Ha! (Bucket list) Actually that was really interesting. 6 weeks. I wonder how my life would change if I only had 6 weeks.
Monarchs are supposed to go from Canada to Mexico. How can they do that with a six week life span? Go figure.
They all migrate the long distance by reproducing their way there. I wonder how many generations of them it takes to go from Mexico to Canada?
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