They hatched! I am so overly excited that our caterpillars have turned into butterflies and moths! It has been the most amazing thing to watch as the caterpillars eat, poop (the kids favorite part), and then cocoon.
I wasn’t really sure how this would all turn out. I started with some bugs and dirt from my garden, found out the sand is not to their liking, and just kept feeding them and giving them a sprinkling of water…hoping for the best! I think I really got into it more than the kids, although they have liked seeing the changes in the bugs.
Our first learning experience was that the horned tomato worms eat A LOT! Then we learned that the little green caterpillars are not baby horned worms, they are something else that turns into a beautiful little yellow butterfly. Their metamorphosis only took about 2 weeks from start to finish. The horned worms took about a month to turn into a butterfly, from the time they buried themselves under the dirt to cocoon until their cocoon actually moved up above the dirt and they hatched. Through that, we learned that there are bugs that cocoon underground!
The first horned worm just hatched today and it turns into a beautiful sphinx moth or a hummingbird moth. They are named that because they are huge, roughly the size of a hummingbird! Their wings start out small and expand as they dry out, as you can see in the pics below.
This was a wonderful science lesson for the kids that took a month in the making, an old aquarium, and the rest was free!
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