Butterfly - The Life Cycle Of An Insect (Rev)

[Music] butterflies delicate frail creatures and yet how far do you think one of them might travel a kilometer a few kilometers a butterfly called the Monarch often travels 6,000 kilm during its migration that's as far as Canada is from Mexico it's an amazing insect of all the varieties of butterflies the Monarch is the most enduring flyer and also lives the longest [Music] let's take a close look at the monarch butterfly the Monarch belongs to the order of scaly winged insects called the lepidoptera its wings like the wings of all butterflies and moths are completely covered with thousands of tiny scales they overlap like shingles on a roof the body of the Monarch is like the bodies of all butterflies it is segmented divided into three parts head thorax and abdomen on the head there are four eyes two compound eyes like this one and two simple eyes which are hidden in the hair there are two antennas with small knobs at the ends the antennas are organs of taste and smell at rest butterflies almost always hold their wings together Mo spread theirs apart most butterflies go through the same life cycle a cycle of complete metamorphosis metamorphosis means change in form and it is just that within a period of 2 weeks this short-legged wormlike caterpillar is transformed into a long-legged winged butterfly now let's follow the life cycle of the Monarch The Story begins with a milkweed plant the female Monarch lays her tiny eggs on the underside of milkweed leaves one to a leaf and after four or 5 days this egg produces a tiny caterpillar the larvae of the butterfly eating milkweed leaves is its major [Music] activity the caterpillar has a voracious appetite and it grows quickly 10 days later the caterpillar is nearly 3,000 times bigger than it was when it hatched from the egg as it increases in size the caterpillar outgrows its skin and sheds it five times this process is called [Music] molting besides being food for caterpillars the milkweed leaves also contain certain chemicals that are poisons but not to the caterpillar they're stored in its brightly colored body the easily seen black and yellow pattern is a warning to Hungry Birds don't eat me I'm poisonous when it's about 12 days old the caterpillar spins a button of silk once the silk button is spun the caterpillar hangs head downward from it to Mt for the fifth and last time its skin is pushed up toward the silk button there isn't another one under this instead under this skin there's a kind of case called a chrysalis now the butterfly is in the pupil stage the pupa inside the chrysis wriggles its last caterpillar skin up and off leaving just the case behind with the skin gone the case hardens this is the resting stage in the Monarch's life cycle in the early summer the pupil stage lasts only 9 days but in the fall it may last more than 3 [Music] weeks the Monarch Pupa inside the chrysis is undergoing many many [Music] changes the green color of the case gradually Fades and it slowly becomes transparent now the adult monarch butterfly is ready to emerge let's see how long it takes for this to happen the Monarch's wings at first are wet crumpled gradually the wings stiffen as body fluids are pumped into them here it took the Monarch about an hour to come out of the chrysalis the poisons that were stored in the body of the caterpillar stay in the body of the adult Monarch if a cat ate the Monarch the poisons could kill it you can observe monarchs for yourself among patches of milked milked plants are a basic part of the Monarch's life cycle not only does the female Monarch lay her eggs on milkweed leaves and the caterpillars eat the leaves but the adult butterflies get their only food from the nectar of milked [Music] flowers to find out if a flower has nectar a butterfly uses its feet the Monarch's feet are equipped with taste organs that are about 2500 times as sensitive to sweet substances as our tongue is to get at the nectar the Monarch uses its long tongue a prob the Monarch extends the proasus into flowers and sucks out the nectar the coiled proasus is somewhat like a straw all summer long you can see monarchs in many parts of North America when fall comes Western monarchs migrate to the California coast but monarchs from the eastern half of the United States and Southern Canada begin their incredible long flights to a woods on a Mountainside north of Mexico City it is thousands of kilometers and many many days of winds and rains away they fly by day and rest at night thousands are blown off the root or die in storms but millions of them survive the difficult migration to Mexico winter passes and in the spring the monarchs head back North mating on the way finding suitable milkweed plants continuing their amazing life cycle like other butterflies they're of the order lepidota the scaly winged insects they develop through a process of complete metamorphosis egg larvae Pupa adult scientists continue to study them the role of hormones in their metamorphosis their migration and navigational ability it's all part of a fascinating story as fascinating as that amazing insect itself the butterfly