#monarch butterfly caterpillar

[jonnysinsectcatalogue]

Monarch Butterfly Caterpillar - Danaus plexippus

If the showcase earlier this year of the adults is anything to go by, there were quite a few of the hungry milkweed-eating wrigglers to be found in the yard this year first. This post highlights several stages of development as the Caterpillars here go from instar to instar with each molt. They begin life as small eggs left on milkweed from the adults that have returned from the south, following the winter migration. Given how their lifespans are, the adults that return to Ontario in the warmer months to lay their eggs are descendants of those who left before winter. The hatchlings that emerge from the eggs are pale and bereft the iconic markings that larger Monarch Caterpillars have. They do however, gain those markings after molting to their 2nd instar alongside the filaments near the front and behind their body. When not feasting on their host plant, they’ll hide away to avoid danger and the intense summer, as can be seen with the individual in Pictures 1-3. Goodness, how tiny it is. As it eats, it will grow MUCH bigger, from smaller than my nail, to longer than my thumb. After molting, the Caterpillar reaches instar 3 and then instar 4. The individual in Pictures 4-6 falls into one of those stages, but size might not be the best way to tell without anything as a scale. 

While size is the biggest factor here (larger the Caterpillar, the more it has grown), the Caterpillar is probably in instar 4 if he consider the length of those sensory filaments. In instar 3, the filaments tend to be shortened; grown much from earlier, but not yet stringy and floppy in appearance. Nearly at full size, these Caterpillars still have a lot of work to do and leaves to eat. As it eats, it grows on the inside, becoming larger until it outgrows its old exoskeleton and necessitating a molt. Though a Caterpillar is soft-bodied, it’s still an insect, and thusly surrounded in a sturdy exoskeleton that protects it, and when outgrown, is shed. Now at giant size, we have the individual in Pictures 7-10; Instar 5 and the last stage of development before the Chrysalis. How much they’ve grown from smaller than a droplet on a leaf, to a patterned, large Caterpillar, and the process usually takes 10-20 days depending on the Caterpillar. And of course, after the Chrysalis molt and a few days of transformation, the regal orange Monarch Butterfly emerges in glory! I could probably make a better timeline of observations if I took a few inside and handled them in a controlled environment, but as always, I like to leave them be (as much as I can) and let the insect go about its business in the natural world. See you next year, little Caterpillars.

Pictures were taken on June 26, 27 & July 10, 2021 and July 9, 2022 with a Google Pixel 4. Happy First day of Winter!

[invertcollection]

7/5/24

life in the milkweed

[pyr0frnzy]

East Blue Bug Crew with the addition of the chopperpilla🐞👒🐛

Originally the idea was something my friend and one of my moots came up with while we were drawing on magma!! We were assigning bugs to different straw hats and these were the ones we came up with. I drew all of them aside from brook and jimbei on magma but I’ll just say what they all are:

Luffy is a hercules beetle, Zoro is a praying mantis, Nami is a monarch butterfly, Usopp is a weevil, Sanji is a hornet, Chopper is a caterpillar (specifically a moth), Robin is a Hawk Wasp, Franky is a Thorn Bug, Brook is a stick bug, and i think Jimbei is a water bug!

Also here are the magma doodles! first one is low quality :( also i learned i cannot draw thorn bugs oops

[bigfatbreak]

I'm sitting very politely and asking if it would be possible to see Adrien akumatised by Viceroy. Even if you don't want to, letting you know I'm insane about all your AUs (and your art in general, alien behaviour Shadow was so cool), you do such amazing work and I am completely normal about it

(Caspases' concept art beloooow)

[veveisveryuncool]

for kirby, handling this power is...a breeze

quick sticker based off the kirby horoscope keychains!

[headspace-hotel]

yesssssssssss

[blessedscavengers]

the life cycle of a monarch butterfly

terfs fuck off

made in 2023

[onenicebugperday]

@iovoj submitted: Hi! I haven't had many chances to get out this summer, but still have a few pics for viewing 🌿🐛 the monarch caterpillar was a surprise, haven't seen one out and about before!

All very nice! I'm especially a fan of the caddisfly, the mayfly, and the little wolf mother :)

[stone-cold-groove]

Types of butterflies and moths.

[plushpile]

dream Squishable bugs ❤️🌱

🪲 Mini Squishable Stag Beetle

🕷️ Mini Squishable Tarantula

🐛 Squishable Caterpillar

🌷 Mini Squishable Orchid Mantis

🦋 Mini Squishable Monarch Butterfly

🌿 Squishable Dragonfly

[lydiajoypalmer]

June Sticker Club - almost Monarch season! Join my patreon anytime this month for this guy as a sticker <3

[jonnysinsectcatalogue]

Jonny's Insect Catalogue - Now on YouTube

As mentioned in my 5 Year Anniversary post showcasing a colony of Small Yellow Ants, the blog's reach has been expanded to YouTube as I've created a channel that will host insect videos. If you are interested in insects or nature content, I will see you there!

Please note: any advertisements placed on my YouTube uploads are not of my doing. The intention with my channel and the videos there are to showcase the insects I've observed, not to incessantly bombard you with ads.  

With the channel up and running, all the videos featured in this blog’s Video Catalogue will eventually be uploaded there without any caveats. Videos that were previously trimmed or separated into multiple parts will be shown in full. Furthermore, the intent is to upload them chronologically, beginning with every video currently uploaded to this blog. I may jump around a bit, especially if I find an amazing insect to share.

New videos will be uploaded every Sunday, creating the following upload schedule for this blog: Tuesday (Tb) >> Friday (Tb) >> Sunday (YT). For additional information, please refer to the YouTube info section of the blog. If you have any further questions, I'm happy to answer them.

The rest of this post will speak briefly on the channel's welcome video (playing above), the channel's outro video and the first insect upload that will grace the channel. I hope to see you in the world of video content creation. Also, I apologize in advance for any audio "pops" heard in earlier recorded videos (particularly those from 2017-2019). Audio for those videos will be cleaned up best as possible before they are uploaded.

The Channel Welcome video is intended to showcase a glimpse into the content that has been on this blog for 5 years. To keep with the natural feel, the background audio was created using the sounds from the following videos: Asian Ladybug Pupa, Cicada Hatching, Potter Wasp. Ironically, though my channel is focused on insects, the Welcome audio primarily features birds. They may like to eat insects, but they provide some of the best and most recognizable natural ambience sounds! As the video approaches the end, there's also a bit of the outro audio when the logo appears...

The channel's video outro audio was created by layering the sounds of the insects in these videos into one track: Black-Legged Meadow Katydid, Brown-Belted Bumblebee, Eastern Carpenter Bee, Cicada Hatching. It was a challenge to synchronize the sounds to the text, but everything gradually clicked together. The outro features the famous slogan for creating a YouTube community, "Like, Share, Subscribe", and of course "Thank you for Watching". I do sincerely mean the latter, thank you! Shorter videos will use a truncated version of the outro since it doesn't make sense to have the video's outro longer than the video itself (haha).

When I originally created the thumbnails for the videos on this blog, I chose the film strip since it holds strong iconography with visual media and movies. It also held potential to be stylized and clean, as if to show the best possible glimpse into the life of the recorded insects. Little did I know that 5 years later I would join them together to create film reel styled graphics for the channel's banner. The image on the left is my first draft, and the image on the right is the final draft currently in use. I didn't want to change the dimensions and content, but the image had to fit YouTube's TV and Desktop parameters. I couldn't bare to junk the original file, so I have included in my channel's welcome video before the insect showcase, and it's featured on the blog in a few places.

All text and image graphics used in my video will be created in photoshop. The videos will be compiled together using Clipchamp. Although it has a bit of lag during playback, slow finishing export and a cluttered UI, I can make it work.

Finally, the first insect video to official grace my YouTube channel will be the Monarch Butterfly I found emerging from its Chrysalis after a few days of careful observation. It's the video I'm most proud of and it showcases something truly special in the insect world. On YouTube, it has a duration of 4:46 compared to 50 seconds here (it had to be trimmed due to size limitations). I'm honored to finally show it in full. Please see for yourself: Monarch Butterfly - Emerging from its Chrysalis.

Thank you to all my followers, readers, friends and family for your support and for viewing these insects. Every one of you mean the world to me. The journey into the insect world continues!

This post also represents a serendipitous milestone: 100 video posts uploaded to this blog! Here's to 100 more featuring many amazing insects!

[have-you-seen-this-animal]

This animal was requested!

[grogusmum]

For those who've been following my little monarch is all growed up!

[tenderanarchist]

Hungry, hungry monarch caterpillar! I love their cute little antennas

[saltedsnailstudio]

take your time

Jasper Alexander

linocut relief print on mulberry paper