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| Here is a Monarch chrysalis (Cocoon). A Monarch stays in it's chrysalis for about three weeks, or one month. Within the cocoon the catterpillar becomes a mush and changes into a graceful Monarch Butterfly. | Well when it just comes out it's not that graceful, but give it time. Once the butterfly is out it pumps blood into its soggy wings and basks in the sun, eventually its wings dry out and it is finally...graceful! | Here you can see the lifecycle of a Monarch. On the right is an egg. Once the egg hatches out becomes a caterpillar. Eventually the caterpillar becomes a pupa or crysalis. Once it hatches out it is a Monarch Butterfly. Female Monarchs lay eggs. |
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| This picture shows each part of the Monarch Butterfly.Like a compound eye. the butterfly's eye is actually made of lots of little eyes, each facing a slightly different direction. The thorax is the middle part of the butterfly's three body segments. The antennae tell a butterfly what's ahead of it. Even though it looks like a butterfly has two wings it actually has four. the forewing and the hindwing on each side. The proboscis is what a butterfly uses to feed. It drinks the nectar from flowers. Although it does not show them in the diagram, the colors are actually made from tiny scales on the butterfly's wings. the real wings are colorless and sometimes totally see-through. | This is a picture of a male and female Monarch mating. Once they've mated they migrate all the way to Mexico and/or New Mexico or Texas! There they hibernate and then lay there eggs. Once the eggs hatch and the caterpillars have become Monarchs they will fly back to New England. |
Here's a Monarch feeding. They feed on nectar by drinking it out of their proboscis, a sort of tube it unrolls and sticks into the hole in flowers. In there is nectar which it drinks. You might think it is bad for the flowers, but it is important in the reproduction of flowering plants. When a butterfly feeds on the sweet nectar it brushes against the POLLEN. When it flies to another flower of the same kind it fertilizes the eggs. Monarchs can sense the presence of Carbon Dioxide. They have a startle reaction when the sense it. That's the way the sense when humans and other creature are close by.
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