Well, sort of.

Continuing from my previous post, I now had two Black Swallowtail Butterfly (Papilio Polyxenes) chrysalises. I thought it might be neat to have a time-lapse of the butterflies emerging.

I had read it could be as soon as five days, but it ended up taking nine. The first chrysalis formed on 7/21, and when I woke up on 7/29 and noticed that it had turned more transparent, I knew there would soon be a new butterfly. It happened a lot quicker than I expected as I'd also read that it could be 24 hours after the chrysalis turned clear before the butterfly emerged. It was actually more like five hours or so.

The video is below. Not much happens for a while except the chrysalises moving a bit, but soon you can start to see some changes taking place in the lower one that indicates the butterfly is ready to emerge. Around the 8:08 time index, the butterfly actually emerges.

Don't blink!

Even though I was taking an exposure every 5 seconds, the butterfly pops out very quickly. If I had a clue how, I would make that portion of the video slo-mo, but alas, my video editing skills are non-existent.

I'm currently also raising a Monarch caterpillar, so hopefully I'll be able to get a video of that transformation, too.

Until then, click the link below for the video:

Follow up: