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The egg is laid
Our monarch has been born as an egg laid by its mother butterfly. In this first stage of its life, our monarch is a tiny white ball attatched to the leaf of a milkweed plant.
[ image from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monarch_(butterfly)#Pictorial_lifecycle] -
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The Life-Span of the Monarch
From birth as an egg to its final death as a butterfly, the minarch can live up to 12 weeks. -
The egg hatches and the caterpillar appears
Our 4 day old monarch hatches from its egg. it now takes the form of a plump wee caterpillar of bright yellow, white and black stripes. It begins building up fats and nutrients for its next stage of transformation. firstly, it eats its own egg shell then begins feasting hungrily on the milkweed plant. For the next 2 weeks our caterpillar will be doing nothing but eating and eating, and growing and growing. -
Our caterpillar becomes a chrysalis
Our caterpillar, now buldging with nutrients and fats, is ready for the next stage it its like: becoming a cyrysalis. It begins by spinning itself a silk pad, then hanging upside down from the milkweed plant, holding tightly onto this silk pad. The caterpillar then malts, forming an emerald coloured chrysalis with a pretty gold ring around the top. The caterpillar stays like this for 2 weeks, all the while changing and transfroming inside the crhrysalis into the final form if its life-cycle. -
Our butterfly emerges
Finally, after 2 weeks of the cyrsalis slowly turning darker in colour, and finally see-through, the monarch hatches from its chrysalis as a beautiful orange, gold and black winged butterfly. At first, our sleepy butterfly must rest, allowing its crumpled wings to dry and fill woth blood before it can take off for ist first flight. [image from:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monarch_(butterfly)#Pictorial_lifecycle] -
The last weeks of the monarch's life
Now that our monarch has finally become a brilliant butterfly, it will live for another 2 to 8 weeks, flying amoung gardens, eating the nectar of nearby flowers. Eventually, however, its short but eventful life must come to an end. But not before it lays its own eggs on a milk weed plant for the next generation of monarchs to go through the the cycle again! [image from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monarch_(butterfly)#Pictorial_lifecycle]
