Painted Lady Butterflies Develop, Emerge in Time Lapse
Here we see the later life stages of several Painted Lady (Vanessa cardui)Butterflies. Once the caterpillars are mature, they suspend themselves upside-down, by attaching a body part called the “cremaster” to a silken pad on the twig, much like the way Velcro works. In about 1 day, the caterpillar sheds its final skin to complete the pupation process. Inside the pupa, the caterpillar has essentially liquified itself into a soup of cells. During the next 12-14 days, metamorphosis takes place - the cells are “re-arranged” and transformed into the adult insect. For most of this process, there is no visible change on the outside, but as the final few days approach, the developing adult butterfly can be seen through the semi-transparent pupal case. The butterfly’s wing colors and pattern can be seen to darken. Finally, the fully developed adult separates from the pupal shell about an hour before it emerges, a process called “eclosion”. Once the adult emerges, it takes only a few minutes to expand its wings by pumping a body fluid into the wings’ vein structure. After a couple of hours, the fluid dries and hardens, leaving the wings rigid enough propel it in flight.
Tags: Develop, Emerge, Lady, Lapse, adult insect, Painted, Time, Butterflies, wing colors
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Definitely fascinating and amazing little critters! Thanks again for all your attention! :-)
Just so beautiful flying gently free in the air,love butterflies :)
Thanks so much Mary! =)
Maravillosas Muchas Gracias***?
MARY***?
The butterflies usualy lay their eggs a few at a time on the, and it takes them about 12-14 days to hatch. The tiny little larvae will look like little worms, about 3/32″ to 1/8″ long, and probably a brown or dark gray-ish color. They could reach the size (diameter) of a dime after about 10-14 days of constant feeding.
mine are mating and i see a shit load of really small worms… are those larva? they are smaller than a dime
Interesting - I’ve never heard that one before… Any idea whay they might call them that?
One more time,because it’s awesome!
Excellent work as always,dude!
In my country we call them The Devil’s Butterfly :D
Thanks so much for watching! :-)
Yes - butterflies and moths have two forewings and two hindwings, making four wings, total. Sometimes it’s hard to tell since the forewings and hindwings overlap a lot, and they move together in flight.
Thanks for watching and commenting :-)
neat!!
do they have 4 wings?! O.o
Thanks so much for watching!
woooaw me guto mucho tu video
Glad you enjoyed it - thanks so much for watching and the great comment! :-)
Man! This is SO awesome! Thx JC. :D
Thanks so much for watching and commenting! :-)
Sorprendente!
but im collect spiders from the world from taxidermy) phoneutria ctenidae theraphosidae hexathelidae………..
@jcmegabyte
in germany are many vanessa cardui…….im collect this! but vanessa atalanta is very beautiful;-) (June august)
Yep! Cardui is one of the many sisters in that genus :-)
vanessa;-)
It really did take a lot of time and effort to capture every little bit of the process. It seems like whwnever I tried to film it in the past, I always missed the “good” parts becuase they waited until I wasn’t looking before they did it! XD
Thanks for watching and the nice comment :-)
I used to buy and raise Painted ladys, and loved to watch them eat, but i never got to see them transform, thank you so much!!!