Year 1 · Science · 2 minutes
The life cycle of a monarch butterfly
Egg, caterpillar, chrysalis, butterfly. Round and round!
Key terms
- Life cycle
- The set of stages a living thing goes through, which starts again when the butterfly lays eggs.
- Egg
- The first stage, laid by a mother butterfly on a swan plant leaf.
- Caterpillar
- The stage that hatches from the egg, eats leaves and grows.
- Chrysalis
- The green case with gold dots where the caterpillar changes.
- Kahuku
- A te reo Māori name for the monarch butterfly egg.
Transcript
Kia ora! What is hiding on this swan plant? A tiny egg! It is the egg of a monarch butterfly. In te reo Māori, one name for it is kahuku.
A mother butterfly lays her eggs on swan plant leaves. Each egg is as small as the head of a pin. After a few days, the egg hatches.
Out comes a tiny caterpillar! It munches swan plant leaves. Munch, munch, munch! It eats and eats, and it grows and grows.
Soon its skin gets too tight. So the caterpillar wriggles out of its old skin! It does this again and again, until it is big and plump.
After about two weeks, the caterpillar hangs upside down, in a J shape. Then it changes into a green chrysalis, with shiny gold dots. Inside, something amazing is happening.
About two weeks later, the chrysalis cracks open. Out comes a butterfly! Its wings are soft and crumpled. It waits for them to dry, and then, off it flies!
Then the butterfly lays her eggs on a swan plant. And it all starts again! Egg, caterpillar, chrysalis, butterfly. Round and round. That is a life cycle.
So remember. The caterpillar eats and grows. The chrysalis is where it changes. And the butterfly lays eggs, so the cycle starts again!
Sources
Every fact in the video, and where it comes from.
- 1sciencelearn.org.nz/resources/monarch-butterflies
- Monarch butterflies lay their eggs on swan plants and other milkweeds; in New Zealand the swan plant is the main food plant for monarch caterpillars.
- In mid-summer the process goes from egg to adult in a month or so.
- 2nzbutterflies.org.nz/species-info/monarch
- One te reo Māori name for the monarch is kahuku (also given as kakahu).
- 3monarchjointventure.org/monarch-biology/life-cycle
- Monarch eggs hatch after a few days (about 3 to 8 days depending on temperature).
- The caterpillar eats milkweed/swan plant leaves and grows, moulting (shedding its skin) several times; it has five instars over about 9 to 14 days in summer.
- The caterpillar hangs upside down in a J shape, sheds its skin a last time and becomes a green chrysalis with gold spots.
- The adult emerges after about 8 to 15 days (about two weeks); its wings are crumpled at first and must expand and dry before it can fly.
- 4sciencelearn.org.nz/image_maps/48-monarch-butterfly-life-cycle
- Egg, larva (caterpillar), pupa (chrysalis), adult: the adult lays eggs and the cycle begins again.
Teaching this next week?
Kuraplan turns this topic into a lesson plan, slides and a worksheet for your class in about a minute.
Plan a lesson on this topic
