How a Caterpillar Turns Into a Butterfly

 While homeschooling I got to take care of two monarch caterpillars. While taking care of them I wondered how the caterpillar turns to a chrysalis and then a butterfly. It would have to reconstruct itself completely, but, how? I've researched it and now I'm going to write about how a caterpillar becomes a butterfly. When the creature is just and egg it takes about four days to hatch into a larva. when the larva hatches it is super hungry and eats its way out of the shell and then eats the rest of the shell for some food. After the larva eats the egg it then eats parts of the leaf it was born on, each different type of butterfly is born on a different corresponding plant, monarchs being the milkweed plant. Two to five weeks after being born the larva is a full-grown caterpillar, the full-grown caterpillar is also just eating and getting ready to pupate (make a pupa, then chrysalis). Grown caterpillars with full stomachs will spin a little silk pad that they hook a hook covered appendage to hang from. From there they shed there last outer layer of skin and become a pupa. When the caterpillar is a pupa it releases its digestive fluids to eat itself alive and become like a soupy liquid inside the pupa that then forms a chrysalis. Gross! It rebuilds its self out of the soupy liquid into a butterfly, it takes ten to fourteen days for the chrysalis to be a butterfly. I would go more into detail but even scientists can't explain how the butterfly does this. After the butterfly is made inside the chrysalis, the chrysalis goes sort of transparent and the butterfly breaks free. My butterflies haven't come out yet but ill make sure to take pictures and add some to this article.