Caterpillar update

It is day 5 of our science project, and our buddy in the jar turned into a pupa overnight. He had been eating a lot of parsley for a couple of days, but yesterday he was not moving much and appeared smaller, as in less succulent.


This morning there was nothing left of the beautiful caterpillar but his chrysalis (toward the bottom of the stem). I read on the Web that rather than making a chrysalis, the caterpillar already has it with him and all he does is shed his skin. I have no idea where the skin went as there was nothing in the jar.

When I did this experiment when I was a kid, it seemed to take months to have the butterfly emerge, but that may have been because time goes so slow when you are young. We'll see how long it takes for the metamorphosis.

It is the time for butterflies here: I have already spotted several swallowtails, one of them as big as my hand.