Butterfly Metamorphosis | Butterfly Transformation Magic

Hey there, welcome to my channel. This is a place where we learn about the amazing insects that share our planet. And today we are going to be learning about one of the most amazing insect transformations known to man. The metamorphosis of a caterpillar into a butterfly. This is a little 500 milligram jar and this is a little pinhole that I made in the lid, just so we can check in on our friend inside. And what you read gone now, see happen here in just a minute, is Now this was a little sped up, but it still took about 15 to 20 minutes for this butterfly to fully emerge. But how does it do that? Well, let's find out. And this process is called it's basically like shedding your skin, but for insects and adults, and it helps them to avoid predators that might be present in the same habitat. Metamorphosis is controlled by hormones and it involves the development of new structures, while the old ones are broken down. These two hormones work together to turn a caterpillar into a butterfly. And during metamorphosis, the body plan of the insect completely changes. Wings and legs are formed inside the chrysalis and the number and size of these structures increases. If you liked this video, make sure to subscribe and leave a comment below of what you want to see next. The wings develop from imaginal cells, which are groups of cells that remain in the caterpillar and become the adult butterfly. These cells are not present in the larva, but they do have the genetic instructions to form them. When the larva is done growing, it stops producing juvenile hormone, allowing ectosone to take over and start the transformation process. Ectosone triggers the imaginal cells to start dividing and they begin to form wings, legs and other adult structures. At the same time, the old larval tissues are broken down and reabsorbed by the body. So basically, most of the parts of the caterpillar get broken down and used to make the butterfly. And when you get to this point in the video, you might think that the transformation is over. But actually, the transformation is only beginning, because what this butterfly needs to do now is pump fluids into its wings and legs to make sure that they're re-ready to use. And it has gone now, spent a lot of time just hanging out and pumping fluids into these things. And once it thinks it's good to go, it's going to fly away. So let's see what this butterfly does after it emerged from the chrysalis. It's going to be the emergence of a butterfly, a swallowtail butterfly to be more specific. So let's take a look. And if you want to know what's inside this jar, well, all you have to do is look at the title of the video. Or if you're re-watching this on social media, look in the description below. But either way, you'll see that this is a chrysalis of a swallowtail butterfly, also known as a pupa. And this is the stage where the caterpillar has formed a little sack around itself. And it's going to stay in this little sack until it turns into a butterfly. And we're going to check in on it every couple days to see how it's doing. So let's jump into the time lapse and see what happens. So let's jump right into it. We're going to start off with an experiment here at Insect Insiders. So here we are checking in on our chrysalis every couple minutes throughout the course of a few days. All right. So you saw the whole process of this butterfly emerging from its chrysalis. And just like that, it flew away. So the whole point of this video is to show you how a caterpillar transforms into a butterfly. Metamorphosis is a biological process that completely reorganizes the cells of an organism and is driven by hormones, specifically juvenile hormone. The process of metamorphosis is truly amazing. It allows insects to exploit different resources as larvae. So the moral of the story is butterflies are nature's transformers.