Discovery Express
  • Welcome!
  • Blog
  • Check out our store!
  • 9 Apples Math Game
  • Your questions answered!
  • About/Contact

Metamorphosis: Butterflies and Frogs

6/14/2017

9 Comments

 
The heat of summer brings out all kinds of different creatures, mostly insects. Monarch butterflies are one of the most common indicators that summer has arrived in North America. However, they don’t look like butterflies when they hatch! The life cycle of a moth or butterfly is a process called complete metamorphosis. That means that they have four distinct stages: egg, larva (caterpillar), pupa (chrysalis), and adult. For monarch butterflies, it takes about a month to grow from an egg to an adult.
Picture
What is Metamorphosis?
 
People can refer to many different kinds of changes as metamorphoses, like drastic makeovers, for instance. But in science, the term 'metamorphosis' refers to a change that an animal goes through as it grows older. The change has to be significant (that is, it has to be really big!)--the final life stage bears no resemblance to the others. For example, humans don’t go through metamorphosis because babies have the same physical structures and functions as an adult would.
 
Many amphibians also go through metamorphosis. They start their lives in the water with gills and a tail to swim around with. As they get older, the lungs form to replace the gills and legs start to develop so they can walk (or hop) on land. For frogs and toads, the tail gradually shortens until it is nonexistent.
Picture
Metamorphosis is caused by hormones being released into the organism’s body. Similar to traffic signals, hormones tell the body when to start growing or producing something, and when to stop! An insect’s growth/metamorphosis is controlled by hormones that are synthesized by endocrine glands near the front of the body. Metamorphosis in amphibians is regulated by the concentration of thyroxine (a hormone produced in the animal’s thyroid gland) in the blood, which stimulates metamorphosis, and prolactin (produced in the pituitary gland), which counteracts the other hormone’s effect and stops metamorphosis.
 
Life Cycle of a Butterfly
 
An adult female butterfly will often lay her eggs on the underside of a leaf to protect them from predators. There, the unfertilized eggs wait for a male butterfly to fertilize them so they can begin to form and hatch as larva. The word larva refers to the growth stage of all insects with complete metamorphosis; caterpillar refers only to a butterfly or moth in this stage.
 
Caterpillars have three distinct body parts: head, thorax, and abdomen. As the caterpillar grows and becomes too large for its skin, it molts, or sheds its skin. Just before they pupate, caterpillars spin a silk mat from which they hang upside down. The silk comes from the spinneret on the bottom of the head. As it sheds its skin for the last time, the caterpillar stabs a stem into the silk pad to hang. ​
Picture
Many moth caterpillars (but not all) spin a silken cocoon to protect them as they grow into an adult moth. Butterflies don’t do this, and their pupa stage is often called a chrysalis to differentiate between moths and butterfly pupae. After approximately 10 to 14 days as a chrysalis, the butterfly is ready to emerge.
 
When it emerges from its chrysalis, its wings are small and wet, and the butterfly can’t fly yet. It has to pump fluids from its abdomen through the veins in its wings to stimulate the wings to expand to their full size. Next, the wings dry and the butterfly must exercise flight muscles before it can fly. After a couple of days, the butterfly is ready to mate and the cycle begins again!
Picture
Watch it in Real Time!
Picture
To witness metamorphosis yourself, it’s fairly easy find kits that allow you to “grow” your own frog or butterfly from a tadpole or caterpillar! We think the TADventures kit from Grow-A-Frog* is a good choice, although there are others.  The Grow-A-Frog kit contains a translucent tadpole ready to grow into a frog, a habitat, food for both tadpole and froglet, soil, and a fun fact booklet. When the frog is a fully-grown adult, it prefers to stay in the water, so you won’t need to transfer your frog to a terrarium.
 
If butterflies interest you more than frogs, there’s also the Butterfly Garden from Insect Lore*. This kit comes with a pop-up mesh habitat, live caterpillars in a cup, and a feeding pipette. The caterpillars already have the food they need in the cup, so they won’t need anything from you until they hang upside down from the top to form chrysalides. Once they have hardened, you can gently remove the top of the cup and place it in the mesh habitat. After about a week, the Painted Lady butterflies will emerge.
 
*Grow-A-Frog, Insect Lore and their associated companies are in no way affiliated with Discovery Express Kids.  Recommendations made on this page are unsolicited, and represent popular choices by our teachers.  
 
​


Image Credits:
 
 
Williams, Laurie. “Butterfly Life Cycle”. Released into the public domain. Uploaded on 6/13/17 from publicdomainpictures.net
 
“Rana Temporaria Spawn”. Released into the public domain under the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 3.0 License. Uploaded on 6/13/17 from commons.wikimedia.org
 
Pinckard, Christina. “Caterpillar on Leaf”. Released into the public domain. Uploaded on 6/13/17 from publicdomainpictures.net
 
McCarty, Megan. “Enclosing Monarch”. Released into the public domain. Uploaded on 6/13/17 from commons.wikimedia.org
 
Black, Keli. “Exploring”. Released into the public domain. Uploaded on 6/13/17 from pixabay.com
9 Comments
Anish
1/17/2018 07:13:55 am

It is very usefull for me

Reply
rittenhouse
3/7/2018 12:50:58 pm

bad

Reply
maya obrai akash
2/21/2019 07:45:12 am

super duper

Reply
Scott H. link
12/11/2019 12:50:34 am

I had the pleasure of catching a caterpillar and watching it transform and then releasing it into the wild. So I can relate to your timelapse pictures you posted. Thanks for the post =]!

Reply
Nicole Ekstrom
4/11/2020 10:23:56 am

Can I link this article to our non-profit website?

Reply
Dr. E
4/11/2020 11:22:57 am

Thanks for the question, Nicole. Tell me more about your website.

Reply
Jane Green link
8/10/2020 07:33:53 am

I had the pleasure of catching a caterpillar and watching it transform and then releasing it into the wild. So I can relate to your timelapse pictures you posted. Thanks for the post

Reply
callmehprincessuwu link
1/11/2021 01:47:30 am

THIS IS GOOD IT HELPS ME TO KNOW THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR YA HELP MISTER ^u^

Reply
maria
2/3/2021 07:13:18 am

this was very useful tysm

Reply

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    Follow us on Pinterest!
    Picture
    Check out our new game for math education, grades 1-7!

    Archives

    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014

    Categories

    All
    Age 10 12
    Age 12 14
    Age 14 16
    Age 16+
    Age 8 10
    Anatomy/Physiology
    Biology
    Chemistry
    Engineering
    Food Science
    Geology/Earth Science
    Health Science
    Math
    Microbiology
    Physics
    Plant Science
    Psychology
    Weather Science

Proudly powered by Weebly