For my project workshop essay I will be studying butterflies. I know it might sound boring but it’s actually not. Okay I’m lying, oh well. So in this assignment I will be mentioning things like the life cycle of a butterfly, what they eat, their body parts, and stuff like that. So let’s get started.
Did you know that butterflies have one of the most dramatic life cycles of any insect member of the insect world? Well they do. The cycle begins when the adult female butterfly lays her eggs. It is usually underneath the leaf. You know like on the bottom. Then as time passes the eggs will eventually hatch into long caterpillars. Well when this caterpillar hatches it begins to feed on the casing of the egg then on the leaf on which it was laid. Caterpillars grow rapidly and have to shed their skin multiple times to make room for this growth. Once the caterpillar has grown to a specific size and when the time is right it enters the next stage of its life, changing from a caterpillar to a chrysalis. To do this the caterpillar supports itself on a silk thread secured to a leaf or twig .Some caterpillars wrap themselves in leaves, others form a chrysalis of silk, and others burry themselves underground. Once it is in the right position, the skin begins to split and shed for the last time, showing the shell of the chrysalis underneath. The shell begins to harden when exposed to air.
The chrysalis looks to be completely inactive but amazing changes are going on inside. The tissues that made up the caterpillar are now transformed into parts of a butterfly. When the butterfly first comes out it has a fat body. In other words a fat abdomen. It also has a limp set of wings. It stays in the sunshine until its wings are dry and has pumped enough blood through the veins in the wings to hold them up stiffly.
Did you know that the surfaces of the butterfly’s wings are made up of thousands of tiny scales? I know what you were thinking. It’s pretty amazing huh? I