Metamorphosis Complete!

It's the moment our young scientists have been waiting for! Our first Black Swallowtail butterfly has emerged! Found throughout most of eastern North America, and highly attracted to the Lab garden, Papilio polyxenes (Black Swallowtail) is the state butterfly of Oklahoma and New Jersey. It's been about two weeks since we noticed the first chrysalis in the front garden planter, and this morning we were pleasantly surprised to find that the first butterfly had emerged.

So what was happening inside the chrysalis that whole time? Basically the caterpillar turns into mush inside the chrysalis, with some basic and important parts staying intact. It then rebuilds itself with antennae, wings, etc and emerges as a butterfly. It's an amazing process which we more commonly refer to as metamorphosis.

Upon emerging, butterflies stretch and flap their wings to uncurl them and improve blood flow. They'll linger near where they emerged, which is where we found this beauty when arriving to the Lab this morning.

Learn more about what else lives in the Lab garden here. You can also see a video we captured of one of our butterflies emerging.