The butterfly has always been associated with beauty and elegance. Because of their many different colors and various designs, butterflies are truly a pleasure to look at. Having affinity with flowers is also something that contributes to the beauty of butterflies. In pop culture, butterflies are used to symbolize change – change from something that is not appreciated, to something that is beautiful and worth noticing.
So what is this metamorphosis and change all about? How does a butterfly become a butterfly from a caterpillar, which appears to be a completely different creature? Briefly explained below is the butterfly life cycle.
The caterpillar life cycle has a total of 4 stages and this whole cycle is called metamorphosis. For each of the stage, the caterpillar goes through some very unique physical changes that will eventually lead to it becoming a beautiful butterfly.
The first stage in a caterpillar’s life is the egg. In here, much like any other egg, it is simply shaped round, cylindrical or oval and is very small in size. These eggs are laid by the female caterpillar near plants as this will soon become food for the newborn caterpillar. The eggs can be round or cylindrical in shape, but are very tiny. You will have to look under many leaves to find some of these eggs.
In the next cycle, the egg then hatches and becomes a larva or larvae. Commonly called caterpillars, they are at the cycle where they need to gather as much food and energy for them to grow – hence, most of the time, all the caterpillar does is eat. And as a caterpillar, its exoskeleton is unable to stretch, so to deal with it, caterpillars shed their skin multiple times during this cycle.
After eating and growing much to its extent, the caterpillar then becomes a pupa. While it may look as if the pupa is simply a case or a shell, what happens inside is the ongoing full transformation of a crawling caterpillar to become a beautiful flying butterfly. In this cycle, most parts of the caterpillar re form to build organs and tissues to make up the butterfly.
As an adult, when the pupa has transformed almost all its parts, the butterfly has his wings folded up in his body and as the pupa breaks, out emerges a beautiful butterfly. At this stage, it is the reproductive cycle as well, so as the butterflies mate, the produce egg and there the whole cycle starts again. So this completes the four stages of transformation from caterpillar to butterfly.
Just like any other organism or living thing, butterflies undergo a lot of physical changes that will enable them to fully grow and be an adult capable of reproducing. It is important to appreciate how nature is able to grow slowly but beautifully the butterflies we see so we would learn to protect them and leave them as they are in their natural habitat. Nature has indeed taught us once again that time and patience can turn something ordinary to something extra ordinary if we let nature run its course.
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