Butterfly With Four Birthdays: Sid Laverents

e [Music] I think you'll agree that one of the most colorful and appealing creatures of the insect world is the butterfly a butterfly doesn't bite or sting or eat our food or crawl over it he is almost always beautiful and quite compatible with man or woman in fact on the other hand one of the most unappealing and distasteful insects to most of us is the crawling creeping caterpillar greedily chewing up a favorite plant in our garden and yet the butterfly and the caterpillar are actually the same insect at different stages in life as you probably know there are many many varieties of butterflies in our story we will take a close look at this beautiful fellow the common name of this variety is the Anis swalla tail because it prefers to lay its eggs on the Anis plant its scientific name is pilio zelon at first glance the zelon is sometimes mistaken for the monarch butterfly because his coloration and markings are somewhat similar the or Anna swalla tale is found mainly in the Western United States ranging from Southern California clear up to Vancouver Island and East as far as Arizona and Colorado in the adult stage our butterfly feeds mainly on the nectar from flowers he has a Long Hollow tongue or proasus which coils up like a watch spring when not in use when sucking the nectar from flowers he uses it like a soda straw extended to its full length the tongue is sometimes as much as an inch and a half long sometimes it also becomes a handy gadget for use in hanging onto a branch you probably think of a butterfly as having two Wings notice that he really has four the wings are covered with these tiny scales the scales produce the colors which you see butterflies and moths all have scales on their wings similar to this which accounts for this insect order being named lepidoptera the word lepidoptera comes from Greek words meaning scaly Wing like a housefly our butterfly has two compound eyes compound eyes have hundreds of tiny lenses instead of one big lens as in our eyes as an adult he sees quite well as a caterpillar he can probably only distinguish between light and dark with rudimentary eyes called oselli mating usually takes place high in the air and soon the female starts looking for an Anis plant the true name of this plant is sweet fennel but it is often erroneously called Anis in this country sweet fennel was originally imported and grown for food purposes it spread like a [Music] weed I've planted some sweet f fenel in our backyard to attract these butterflies this simplified study in photography if the female butterfly can't find the plant she prefers she may lay her eggs on a carrot or parsley plant but she prefers Anis or fennel sweet fennel smells like licorice when crushed the young CHS are sweet and succulent and are good in salad well anyway most people like it a female finds a plant to her liking she deposits several tiny yellow green [Music] eggs and we have just witnessed the first of our butterflies four birthdays we can tell how tiny the egg is by comparison with the head of a pin in a few days the egg changes color and in about 10 days with a magnifying glass you can actually see the little caterpillar inside e [Music] and so at birthday number two the egg becomes a baby caterpillar he usually eats most of the eggshell before he settles down to the important business of eating sweet f at this point he can only eat the soft skin and juices of the plant but he eats almost [Music] continually he was about a 16th of an inch long at Birth here just 30 6 hours later he is almost six times as [Music] big he eats and grows almost unbelievably F so fast in fact that his skin can't keep up with it notice how tight it's becoming suddenly he begins to make some odd movements his skin splits and out he comes with a brand new skin this new skin has colored Stripes which help to camouflage him and make him harder to see in the fenel plant he sheds his skin like this at least twice during his life as a caterpillar once when he's very small nothing goes to waste he eats the old skin during this period of his life he eats tremendous quantities of food a dozen caterpillars can almost strip of sweet fennel plant in a few days even though this plant grows exceptionally fast [Applause] [Applause] soon the ground beneath the plant is covered with droppings to show how rapidly he grows these shots were taken exactly one day apart with the same lens the same distance from the camera day number six one week 8 Days 9 days 10 11 days and a new skin 12 13 days and he's almost 2 in long suddenly one day he becomes nervous and starts to climb down down out of the plant that has been his home [Music] [Music] it seems that this spot has already been staked out oh well there's no use getting violent about it this looks good as he climbs up the branch he spins a web of silk look closely in these close-ups of the head and you can see the silk coming out of a small he spins the silk almost continually while climbing he uses it as a sort of safety rope as you see here the silk is very strong one strand will support him if he falls and he can climb up practically any Surface by making a ladder of silk here we see him climbing up a piece of glass [Music] however now he has other purposes than climbing in mind first he covers the branch of his choice almost completely with the silk [Music] then he weaves one big wad of silk he gets Above This performs these acrobatics on the underside of his tail there are two rings of stiff bristles these become entangled in the wad of silk when they're firmly secured he settles down then he starts the intricate job of weaving a special Loop an amazing thing about these and other insects is the tremendous amount of knowledge that they are born with no one teaches them to do all this we call it Instinct but wouldn't it be nice if we could be born with knowledge that our ancestors had learned say maybe a knowledge of mathematics through calculus when the loop is complete to his satisfaction he shrugs under it 20 or 25 strands of silk relatively almost as strong as a steel cable now he settles down to sleep while strange changes start to take place within his body the body gradually begins to change shape [Music] it arches back from the stem until it's entirely supported by the silk by the way this is a different caterpillar from the first one we were watching it is of somewhat darker coloration the shiny black things you see toward the top are his front feet tucked up under his chin [Music] a few days after he first attaches himself to the branch his occasional twitching becomes more violent and suddenly the skin breaks [Music] this is sort of like trying to get out of a girdle with a belt on and your hands tied behind your back [Music] [Music] birthday number three he is now in the pupa or cursus state age on contact with the air the Crysis hardens and changes color they usually are a light green color at first gradually darkening with age however sometimes they will be quite different colors they may attach themselves to any convenient surface it is probably only coincidence but often they seem to assume the coloration of the surface they [Music] one day I noticed what seemed to be a tiny fly on a chrysis closer investigation showed it to be a little wasp and it turned out that this tiny fellow is probably the worst enemy that our Anis butterfly has he is less than an eighth of an inch long and has the mouth filling name Talus puparum research showed that he was imported from Europe years ago to control the white cabbage butterfly the female has a long sharp needle or ovipositor under the Cent part of her body here she is using the needle to laboriously drill a hole in the hard chrysis look closely under the body and you can see the needle when the drilling is complete it appears that She lays her eggs in the hole the butterfly chrysalis cannot move of course except to Twitch a little and is completely helpless so this tiny little wasp about the size of a gnat is probably the main reason that the Anis butter fly is not much more plentiful than it is if the Crysis is cut open in a few days it will be almost completely filled with these tiny larvi soon thereafter holes appear and Out Come the newly hatched wasps [Music] the first thing they do as adults is to mate then they fly off and all that is left is the dead shell of our Chrysalis during the caterpillar stage one of the ways he discourages enemies is to stick out these orange horns they give off an offensive odor and probably this discourages Birds he can even put out his horns after he has gone into his sleep at this stage however one enemy that it takes more than a bad odor to discourage is the praying mantis this comical appearing fellow in spite of his appearance is one of the most voracious killers in the insect world he affects a bouncing walk when stalking this fools his intended prey into thinking he is a leaf or twig blown by the wind [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] a praying mantis will attack almost any insect [Music] [Applause] it looks like he has decided to try a little butterfly for [Music] dessert however our butterfly has excellent eyesight and good strong wings and it's a different story this [Music] time if our Chrysalis is lucky enough to survive his enemies one day a crack appears if it is the middle of summer this may happen in about 10 days or if later in the season it may take longer the crack widens then the last desperate effort out comes a slightly bedraggled looking butterfly this is his final and fourth birthday he's now an adult butterfly [Music] The Blood starts to pump into his wings and they begin to take shape finally they are normal size and he hangs them out to dry if something interferes with the drying process and they don't dry straight he will not be able to fly and so we have seen all four of our butterflies birthdays the complete life cycle we started as an adult then the egg the larvae or caterpillar Pupa or Chrysalis and finally the adult [Music] again this whole process the changing from one form to another is known as [Music] [Applause] [Music] metamorphosis the purpose of our little story has been to point out that we are all often so busy that we don't even see the wonderful and beautiful things that's surround us H Sydney I thought you told me you were going to photograph butterflies Yes dear as I was saying the per purp of our little story has been to point out that we are surrounded by wonderful and interesting things if we will just take the time and trouble to notice [Music] n [Music]