Metamorphosis

📖 In short

Did you know that a beautiful butterfly started out as a little caterpillar? This big change in an animal's shape as it grows is called metamorphosis. Some animals are born looking completely different from their parents, then change bit by bit until they look like them.

🤩 Did you know?

An insect may stay in its chrysalis for a few days or several months.
A caterpillar eats an enormous amount, and may grow thousands of times bigger before it becomes a chrysalis.
Cats, dogs and horses don't go through metamorphosis: their babies look like their parents from birth.
A baby frog is called a tadpole.

🔎 Find out more

🌟 The butterfly's story

A butterfly lays a tiny egg, and a caterpillar hatches out that eats leaves and grows. Then the caterpillar makes a case around itself called a cocoon or chrysalis; inside, its whole body changes, and out comes a butterfly with colorful wings!

🔍 The frog's story

A frog starts as an egg in the water, then becomes a little tadpole with a tail that breathes with gills like a fish. Then it grows legs, its tail disappears and it breathes with lungs, becoming a frog that hops on land.

💡 Incomplete metamorphosis

Some insects like grasshoppers go through a simpler change: the young hatch looking like their parents but without wings, then shed their skin several times and grow until their wings appear.

🎯 Why is metamorphosis useful?

The young and the adult don't eat the same food or live in the same place: the caterpillar eats leaves and the butterfly drinks nectar. So they don't compete for food.