Getting bigger

Baby Holly Blue caterpillar is now 6 days old and if all goes well, tomorrow it will shed and eat its skin which is too tight because it's grown from 1mm to 2mm. It will repeat this process 4 times in total. Each stage is called Instar. It’s currently first instar (from the Latin "instar" which means form).
The head, the black blob, is usually hidden inside the body unless it’s eating or moving. At rest the head is unseen.
The 5th time it sheds its skin, it will be 13-15mm long but the process then will be different. The skin will be shed, but instead of a bigger caterpillar, it will become a pupa.
This is a complicated process by which caterpillar parts disappear and butterfly parts emerge. They are already within the caterpillar as imaginal cells and discs (think stem cells). So some parts are deactivated and others turned on.
After about a month of pupation, so in 6 or 7 weeks total, hopefully I'll see the newly eclosed (emerged) butterfly.
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26th May 2023 26th May 23