This part of my page is dedicated to Silky. Silky is a black swallowtail caterpillar! I found him in Round Top, NY. You can follow along as it changes right before my eyes! I learned so much about caterpillars in the past few days!! Come along on an adventure with Silky and our newest friend Squiggles!!
This is Silky!!
Here are some of the things that I learned!
Silky is a black swallowtail caterpillar. That means that Silky will turn into a black swallowtail butterfly soon! We won’t know if Silky is a boy or a girl until it turns into a butterfly.
This kind of caterpillar is also called a parsley worm!! He loves to eat parsley, or anything in the carrot family. He eats the toxins from the plants, so he is not good to eat. Silky’s favorite snack is Queen Anne’s Lace. That’s a wild carrot that looks like this:
Photo from: https://www.anniesannuals.com/plants/view/?id=321
Silky is safe for people to touch. He is super smooth, and soft. That’s why I named him silky! He doesn’t love to be touched too much though, so he gets grouchy. When Silky gets scared or mad, he releases orange horns and a bad smell to scare away predators. I couldn’t get a picture so I borrowed one.
Photo from: https://bugguide.net/node/view/28634
Silky will eat lots and lots (and poop lots and lots) until he is ready to make his chrysalis. A chrysalis is like a cocoon. I learned that a cocoon is what a moth makes and spins out of silk. Butterflies have a chrysalis. When the caterpillar is ready to go into the chrysalis, it will start to attach itself to a stick or something, like this:
After about a day, the caterpillar sheds its skin and then it finishes its chrysalis. Then it starts to look almost like a piece of wood. Good camouflage!
This is what it looks like today!!
It take from 10 days to weeks or even months to come out as a butterfly. I’ll keep everyone posted on that!
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