(upbeat music)
- I'm Miss Penny, it's very nice to meet you.
We're happy to be here at Butterfly World,
and happy to meet a butterfly expert.
What's your official title?
- So you can call me a lepidopterist.
- What is that title again?
- A lepidopterist, that's somebody who studies butterflies.
- And what is your job here?
- [Natalie] Teaching people how to attract butterflies
to their garden, and what tools you need
in order to attract those butterflies.
I would come here pretty often as a guest,
and one day I saw that they had the now hiring sign,
and I thought, what a perfect place to work.
I take my love for butterflies
and my love for teaching people about the environment.
- That's terrific.
So now you're going to teach what you love.
And why are butterflies so important to our ecosystem?
- [Natalie] Well they're pollinators,
and they also serve as food for other, bigger animals.
- If we wanted to grow our own butterfly garden,
what exactly do we need?
- [Natalie] So two components.
You need host plants and you need nectar plants.
So the host plants are gonna serve as
food for your caterpillars,
that's where the female butterfly's gonna lay her eggs,
and you also need nectar plants.
This is gonna serve as food for your adult butterfly.
- Wow, that sounds interesting.
- Yeah.
- Let's meet the KidVision kids
and teach them about butterflies
and how to make a butterfly garden.
- Sounds great, let's go.
- Yeah!
(chiming)
(gentle music)
- Now, we are in the lab with the children,
and let's learn about the life cycle of a butterfly.
- Sure thing.
So the life cycle of the butterfly has four stages.
Everybody put four fingers up.
So stage number one is going to be the egg,
can you all say egg?
- Egg!
- Can you all say caterpillar for stage number two?
- [Everyone] Caterpillar!
- [Natalie] Then chrysalis.
- [Everyone] Chrysalis!
- [Natalie] Then finally, the butterfly.
- [Everyone] Butterfly!
- Very good, do you guys want to meet a caterpillar?
- Yes! - Okay.
- So over here I have an idea caterpillar.
Idea caterpillars are native to Asia.
Native just means that their home is in.
Now, usually when we go into our backyards
and we see a caterpillar with spikes,
are we gonna touch it?
- No!
- Sometimes caterpillars, - Leave it alone.
Yeah, leave it alone.
Sometimes caterpillars with spikes may be poisonous,
but I know that my friend, Pat,
this is Pat by the way, my friend Pat over here,
he's not poisonous to the touch.
Would you guys like to pet my friend Pat?
- Yes!
- Okay, very softly.
You can say this is the baby version
of the butterfly.
- Aww, he's so soft. - He feels squishy!
- [Natalie] Very good.
- [Boy In Solid Blue Shirt] He feels squishy.
- Oh, he does, he feels soft.
- He's very soft.
So this is stage number two
of the butterfly's life cycle, the caterpillar.
You can call this the caterpillar or the larva.
Can you guys say larva?
- [Everyone] Larva!
- Very good.
So underneath this lid over here
are all butterfly chrysalises.
So you can see one caterpillar,
he's all big and fat and chubby.
Now he's getting ready to shed his last skin,
and then underneath that last skin
will be the chrysalis or the pupa.
- How do they hold on?
- So the way they stick themselves to a leaf,
a plant, or a lid, like I have here,
is a little piece of white sticky, sticky silk
that they use to glue themselves to the top
of wherever they think it's gonna be a safe place
to go into their chrysalis or pupa.
So all of these butterfly chrysalises,
they're gonna turn into butterflies
within a couple weeks, maybe a couple months
depending on the kind of butterfly it is.
And when the butterfly is ready to come out,
the first thing that butterfly has to do
is dry his or her butterfly wings.
So once it's ready to come out,
they'll release a little bit of butterfly blood
called meconium.
And then once he starts to fly around
in this little container, he's ready to go.
- What does metamorphosis mean?
- So metamorphosis is just a big word for change.
That caterpillar, he changed from a little larva,
little caterpillar, to a butterfly.
Now he's an insect, he went through
a complete transformation.
Are you guys ready to meet my butterfly friends?
- Yes!
- All right, let's go meet them.
(chiming)
(upbeat music)
- We're in the aviary, and we're going to learn
about the parts of a butterfly.
- So do you guys remember in the lab,
when we met Pat the caterpillar?
- Yeah! - Yes.
- Do you guys think that Pat's big brother or sister
is going to be yellow, pink, or blue?
Blue?
Okay. - Pink!
Pink?
Pink, how about yellow, white, and black?
- [Everyone] Wow!
- So this is Pat's big sister.
This is what Pat the caterpillar is going to turn into.
This is an idea butterfly.
- [Penny] That's very cool.
- So all butterflies have three main body parts.
They have a head,
everybody point at your head,
they've got a thorax right over here,
the thorax on a butterfly controls their muscle
and body movements, like their four wings.
Can you flap your four butterfly wings?
The thorax also controls their six butterfly legs.
Can you stomp your six butterfly legs?
After the thorax, they have an abdomen.
Can everybody say abdomen?
- Abdomen!
- So the abdomen is like their belly, very good.
Inside their abdomen, they store their eggs
and their nectar.
So boys and girls, can you guys stomp your feet again?
(stomping)
Can any of you boys and girls taste the
floor with your toes right now?
- No! - Yeah!
- Are you a butterfly?
So butterflies, they use their six legs for tasting.
Have you guys ever had a butterfly kiss before?
(upbeat music)
Very good. - That's awesome.
So sweet.
- [Penny] Awesome.
- Very good.
Do you guys want to know how to get butterflies
in your backyard like we have here at Butterfly World?
- Sure.
- [Natalie] A host plant is basically
a butterfly's favorite plant.
Every kind of butterfly has a different host plant,
a different favorite plant.
Do you guys know about the monarch butterfly?
- [Student] No!
- Her favorite plant is called milkweed.
Everybody say milkweed.
- [Everyone] Milkweed!
- Very good, so the monarch is only going to lay her eggs
on milkweed because that is the only plant
her little caterpillars will eat.
They won't eat your roses,
they won't eat your daisies or your sunflowers,
just milkweed.
- Would you like to plant a butterfly garden?
- Yeah!
- Can we do that?
- Definitely! Let's go plant a butterfly garden.
- Let's do it!
(chiming)
(upbeat music)
- How do you plant a butterfly garden?
- To plant a butterfly garden,
you need two things.
You need a host plant and you need nectar plants.
Your host plants are gonna be food
for your caterpillars, your nectar plants
are gonna be food for your adult butterfly.
Over here to our left, we have coontie.
Boys and girls, you can touch this plant.
This is the food plant for the Atala butterfly.
The Atala butterfly is a really beautiful
little black and blue and red butterfly.
She's so pretty, and she's only going to lay her eggs
on this one plant.
Now what happens if we don't have this plant?
- There's no eggs.
- No eggs, no Atala butterfly.
So if we get rid of this plant, this plant no longer exists,
then that butterfly no longer exists.
So that's why it's so important to plant
host plants, or food plants,
so that we can promote the survival of the butterflies.
- And then what do the butterflies eat?
- So the butterflies, they're gonna sip nectar.
The butterflies no longer have a mouth,
now they have a straw-like tongue
called a proboscis that they use to sip nectar.
And they are gonna sip nectar from flowers
such as this flower over here.
This is sweet almond, this is a wonderful nectar plant,
the butterflies love this kind of flower.
They also love porter weed.
- [Penny] Oh, that's so pretty.
- This is a beautiful flowering plant
and the butterflies will sip the nectar
off of this flowering plant.
Now when you're building your butterfly garden,
you wanna make sure you have flowers
of all sorts of shapes and all sorts of sizes
to make sure you can accommodate for a bunch
of different kinds of butterflies.
Your host plant, that's gonna be the main magnet.
That's really what's going to draw your
butterflies to your garden to lay those eggs.
Caterpillars will only feast off of this plant.
Butterflies, they'll go to just about any flower,
preferably wild, native flowers.
- So you need two types of plants
to plant a butterfly garden.
A host plant.
- Yep.
- [Penny] For the caterpillars,
- Yes.
- And a nectar plant for the butterflies.
- Excellent!
- Perfect!
I think we should get planting.
- Yeah, let's get planting.
You guys wanna plant? - Ready to plant?
- Yeah! - I wanna!
- Great, we're just gonna start making our hole
so we can put this plant in here.
- So as I see it, you push down.
- [Natalie] We push down, and then up, making sure we get
some dirt out.
- Wow, look at that.
- [Natalie] Wow.
- Do you want to try it?
- Yeah!
- Okay.
(upbeat music)
- Thank you Miss Natalie,
for being a great butterfly expert
and showing us how to grow a butterfly garden.
- Thank you for coming.
- It was great.
- Thank you Butterfly World, bye!