Day 24: the emergence

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Metamorphosis Watch: Day 24 

If you wade into nature observing it closely, you discover that miracles happen every day. But perhaps none more dramatic than what we have been watching the past 24 days. 

From tiny egg to larva to sherbet-green pupa inside a chrysalis to black and orange winged adult. 

Remember the exoskeleton or shell of the chrysalis is transparent, a window to the change and today that change was very apparent after eleven days our monarch butterfly is ready to emerge.

The caterpillar grew slowly. The transformation of the pupa took days as cells moved about and realigned themselves. But emergence happens quickly, a matter of minutes. It is a deeply moving miracle to behold. 

But birth, like all birth, is a struggle. After freeing its head and antenna it must reach out and with its new legs grab a hold of the chrysalis shell. And cling tightly so that it doesn't fall while it frees its abdomen and pump its wings full of hemolymph, insect blood.

This is what we have waited for and as you might suspect, the new life form is born head first. It sees the world for the first time with its new eyes, feels the world with its new legs for the first time, and soon flaps its new wings to fly away. 

Being a good steward, I took the butterfly back to the same damp ditch where I found the egg over three weeks ago. There I tagged it and released it only a few feet away from its original common milkweed plant. Its Monarch Watch number is ABAZ236. Should you happen to capture it along its way to Mexico, you will now know is provenience.

Such miracles as metamorphosis happen millions of times a day. Roughly, half the species on the planet go through complete metamorphosis, so it is  an evolutionary strategy that has proven to be successful over the millennia.

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