What are the stages of a butterfly’s life cycle?

There are four stages to a butterfly’s life, and each stage is radically different from the others.

Briefly, a butterfly starts as an egg. After about 5 to 10 days the egg hatches and a tiny caterpillar (larvae) emerges.

The caterpillar starts to eat and will shed it’s skin 4 to 6 times as it gets bigger and bigger.

After about 2 to 4 weeks the caterpillar will be full grown and transforms itself into a chrysalis/pupa.

What happens next is most amazing as inside the pupal case the caterpillars body breaks down into a kind of soup from which grows the adult structure of the butterfly! This stage can take between 10 to 15 days.

Finally, the adult butterfly emerges from the chrysalis. Adult butterflies will mate, the female will lay eggs and the life cycle starts over. The whole process is called metamorphosis, which means “change of form”.