This can take anywhere from one to four weeks in a tropical climate and even longer in cooler climates. The caterpillar then forms the pupa case under the caterpillar skin and sheds the old caterpillar skin. Inside the pupa, the body of the caterpillar deconstructs and then reforms into the butterfly. Some species hang head down while other species also spin a girdle around the thorax that holds it in an upright position. The caterpillar spins a silken pad, then using hooks on the bottom end of its body (called the “cremaster”) which it attaches to the silk. The pupa or chrysalis stage is the final instar of the caterpillar where the metamorphosis takes place. Often the new skin differs slightly in pattern or colour to the previous one.Įach stage is called an “instar”. The new skin has enough stretch in it to allow further growth and during its time as a caterpillar, it will repeat this process another three times. Being very small when it first emerges, the caterpillar soon becomes too big for its skin, and within a week, it will attach its hind parts onto a leaf by way of silk, it will rest for a while, and then literally walk out of its skin. If the female laid on the correct plant, the caterpillar then goes on to eat its first meal, and with a few exceptions, this meal is basically uninterrupted – these caterpillars are the original eating machine. If you were wondering why we don’t see as many butterflies around as we used to, it’s because the use of herbicides has reduced the supply of plants that caterpillars can eat.Īpproximately four to five days after the fertilised egg has been laid, the caterpillar eats its way out of the shell, often turning around and ingesting it. You can easily find out which are tasty for the caterpillars in your area by ringing a reputable plant nursery.Ĭaterpillars are fussy eaters, and usually a species will only eat one or two types of plants. The trick to encouraging butterflies into your garden is to cultivate these plants. The female has odour detectors which allow her to locate the plant, sometimes from as far away as two or three kilometres. The lifecycle of a butterfly starts with the female butterfly who deposits her eggs onto a specific plant. – Hercules moths are seasonal, however our breeding program is so successful that we always have Hercules cocoons, caterpillars or moths on display and sometimes all three at the same time, usually from September to June. – The Hercules moths do not have a usable proboscis and cannot feed, so they only live long enough to find a mate and for the female to lay her eggs – which is about 2 to 8 days. – They have been known to stay in their cocoons from two months to two years. – The caterpillars get so large that they end up looking like green pork sausages with legs. – The host food plant for the caterpillars is the Bleeding Heart tree (Omalthamus novoguineenis) and Cheese tree (Glochidion sp). – The female Hercules moth is bigger than the male because it has to carry a belly full of eggs – up to 300 of them. The Guinness Book of Records states it had an incredible wingspan of 36cm (14.17 inches). – The largest Hercules moth ever recorded was a huge female caught in 1948 at Innisfail, just south of Cairns. It is only found in North Queensland and New Guinea. "They seem quite healthy at first and then they just shrivel up and die.The Hercules Moth is the world’s largest moth. "Internationally we've found out that no-one else has got them overseas that we know of at the moment either," he said. Scientists have to find and harvest Ulysses eggs in the wild to get more specimens for the lab to do further research.Īustralian Butterfly Sanctuary general manager Mel Nikolich said there was no-one in Australia that could breed Ulysses butterflies at the moment. The sanctuary does not have a single Ulysses butterfly in their enclosure, but was still successfully breeding dozens of other butterfly species. It said the species was also disappearing from the wild. The Australian Butterfly Sanctuary at Kuranda, west of Cairns, raised the alarm after months of failing to successfully breed the Ulysses butterfly, despite an earlier 90 per cent success rate. There are concerns for the future of the electric blue Ulysses butterfly in far north Queensland, with the country's biggest breeder saying they have not been able to breed the species in nearly a year.
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