Hi everyone, my name is Marjorie
and I'm here in the Judy Istock Butterfly Haven
to get ready to do our First Flight Butterfly Release.
So these butterflies that we're going to be releasing today
they took a long journey to be here
and so before we open this box and watch them fly for the very first time,
I'm going to tell you a little bit about their journey that they took to get here today.
So these butterflies, they didn't start off in life as butterflies.
They started off in life as something else.
I'm wondering if anyone watching today knows what a baby butterfly is called.
That's right, they are called a caterpillar.
So baby butterflies, they're called caterpillars.
They hatch out of an egg laid on a leaf
and once they come out of that egg, then they start eating.
And if you look around here today, we have a lot of leaves in here
So these butterflies, they start eating and then as they get bigger,
because they eat so many leaves, they actually have to shed their skin.
Their outer skin is called an exoskeleton and it doesn't grow like our skin does.
So they have to shed it sort of like how a snake does.
And they have to do that a few times in order to get bigger.
These butterflies, if you look around here today, we don't have any caterpillars in here
and the reason we have no caterpillars is because they like to eat those leaves.
So if we had caterpillars in the Haven, we would have no more leaves.
We wouldn't have a Butterfly Haven anymore.
So, instead, these butterflies grew up somewhere else.
If you look around, we have a lot of tropical flowers in here.
That's because it's very tropical in here, it's very warm and it's very humid,
it's not like it is outside in the fall in Chicago,
and that's because these butterflies are tropical butterflies.
They come from tropical places all over the world, like Southeast Asia, South America, Africa, and Australia.
Once those caterpillars eat all of the leaves they're going to
in the places that they grew up,
they have one more important thing to do
and that is to shed their skin one last time.
So they crawl to the underside of a leaf or a twig,
grab on, shed their skin one last time, and then they turn into something else.
So a lot of you knew what a baby butterfly was called,
that it was called a caterpillar,
does anyone know what caterpillars turn into?
Some of you might have said a cocoon,
so caterpillars that are going to become moths,
they spin silk around themselves before shedding their skin
and then they turn into a cocoon.
We have all butterflies here today and so the caterpillars,
they actually shed their skin and turn into a chrysalis.
But whether they're in a chrysalis or a cocoon,
they still have that same important job to do
and that's to change from a caterpillar that eats leaves
into a butterfly or moth that doesn't.
So inside the chrysalis they actually have to change their bodies.
They have to grow new antenna, they have to grow new eyes,
they have to grow a new mouth, and all of that takes a lot of work.
So while they're inside their chrysalis, they're not moving around a lot.
They're usually just hanging there, maybe giving a little wiggle or so.
But because those chrysalises aren't moving,
that's the perfect time for them to get mailed to us here at the Museum.
A couple times a week, we get shipments of chrysalises from all over the world.
Once those shipments reach the Nature Museum,
we hang them up in our Haven Lab and then they hang there.
We wait for the butterflies or moths to emerge from their chrysalises or cocoons.
Once they do emerge, our butterfly scientists put them in this box, here through this sleeve,
and then someone comes out here and does this release whenever the butterflies are ready.
So these butterflies are all ready to go, and this is going to be their first day as butterflies,
so sometimes they'll fly away, sometimes they'll stay in the box.
If they stay in the box, that's okay.
I'll pick them up gently and set them down outside of the box.
So what we're going to do is,
I'm hoping that you at home today will help me count down
and then we're going to open the box and we're going to watch them fly for the first time.
All right, are we ready?
You can help me count down, we're gonna start from five.
Ready? Five, four, three, two, one!
All right, as you can see, we still have a few butterflies that are waiting to fly away.
They might not have enough energy to get away so what I'm going to do,
is I'm going to help them on their journey out of the box.
Thank you so much for joining our First Flight Butterfly Release!
Enjoy the rest of Flutter into Fall!