Butterflies!

Both of our chrysalides have grown up into butterflies. The second one didn't want to leave the cage but the first one was happy to. We found out that if it has a black dot on the lower part of the wing, then it's a male. The first one was a female because it didn't have a dot. The second one was a male because it has a black dot. It's kind of like cologne for butterflies. The female smells it and thinks it smells good so she goes and finds the male. Can you tell which one is which in the above pictures?

Chrysalis

We looked at the chrysalises today and saw that one of them has some gold spots on it. So we looked it up in the book and found out that we think they use those to reflect off the sunlight so that when the birds fly by they know that it's not good to eat.

We could see a wing starting to form through the chrysalis. We have monarch chrysalises but there are other butterflys that looks almost exactly like it except for two black lines on the lower part of the bottom wings. This butterfly is called the viceroy. From a picture we saw that it's smaller than a monarch. We also learned that the monarch's colors proclaim to birds that it is distasteful so that is why the viceroy's colors are like the monarch's so that birds will leave it alone! I think the viceroy is just a big copycat!

Caterpillars!

We are raising caterpillars which we found on our milkweed plants. The caterpillars were getting eaten by the lizards so we cut some milkweed and brought it inside. The milkweed kept dying because there wasn't enough sunlight and the airconditioning wasn't helping either. We brought them outside and the next day we think one got stung by a wasp because it looked like it had exploded and a wasp was eating it. That's when we learned that wasps are carnivores and predators.

The next day, before my dad went to work, my mom asked if he could build something to go over them so protect them from lizards and wasps. We also wanted a place where we could see them turn into chrysalises. (Chrysalises are what they go into when they turn into butterflies.)

The two fattest and biggest ones went into their chrysalises. We are waiting for the butterflies to come out.