Description
Description
Egg: When the butterfly lays its eggs they are sphere-shaped, bumpy and white.
Caterpillar: The caterpillar has white, black, and yellow colored stripes. It has three pairs of thoracic legs and five pairs of prolegs. Those will disappear during the pupa period. It has 2 pairs of sensory tentacles, one pair on the head or top of the caterpillar and another pair at the lower part of the abdomen.
Pupa: The monarch remains in its pupa for about two weeks. The green cylindrical pupa becomes see-through a day before the adult emerges.
Adult: The butterfly is bright orange with black wing veins and outer margins. The wings have white spots on outer margins (the Vietnamese ones have more white spots than the American.) Also they have three orange patches near the top of the forewings. The hind wings are very rounded, and they are lighter in color than the forewings. The body itself is black.
How can you tell the difference in the butterfly by their wings?
The female butterflies have thicker wing veins. The wing vain is the black thin lines on its wings. Also the male has two small black spots on its hind wings. They are symmetrical to each other.
