Home Science Experiment - Butterflies

I was out in the garden Saturday looking around, checking things out among the few remaining items we still have out there. Here in the carrots were these caterpillars. I put six of them in a gallon glass jar along with a bunch of carrot leaves and some sticks. They ate like horses and overnight almost all of the leaves were gone.

Doing some research on the internet, I found out they were the caterpillars of the black swallowtail butterfly. They lay their eggs in the late fall on plants such as dill, carrots, or parsley. If you click to enlarge this picture you should be able to see the drops of rain or mist on the caterpillar. Looks neat.

On the second night already, a couple of them had attached themselves to branches with a silk or web sling. There is stuff happening under the skin, although you can't tell.

After a couple or few nights of hanging on the branch, we had the last pupa stage or the chrysalis. Pretty cool. I did not know that the chrysalis develops under the skin and then sheds the skin when ready. You can see the skin of the caterpillar hanging at the bottom of the chrysalis. As of right now we have three chrysalis and two caterpillars hanging in the sling. The remaining caterpillar was running around looking for a place to set up camp. The three sticks I had in there were pretty full, so I added another one for this guy. Hopefully he finds it and makes use of it.

One thing they do before setting up camp is empty their guts, if you know what I mean. It is pretty amazing just how much there is. I suppose Nancy should clean that out one of these days. Ha.

Normally the chrysalis of this butterfly would winter and then open in the spring. I think, though, that if we have them inside it won't take that long. I'm not sure. We'll just let them in there until something happens. Pretty soon we'll have our own butterfly house where they roam free and alight on our shoulders or noses. No, not really. By the time the butterflies come out it'll probably be pretty cold and we'll have to "dispose" of them.