Insect Lore Two Cups of Live Caterpillars - 10 Live Painted Lady Caterpillars with Food - Includes Bonus Butterfly Life Cycle Figurines - Refill for Butterfly Garden Habitat

The caterpillars come in a cup that you are not supposed to open lest their food get moldy or whatever. They spin a web so it quickly gets hard to see clearly to observe them. They grow very quickly and from the time of delivery to emerging as butterflies only took 20 days. It says you can release them unless in certain states. But ours all fly upside down despite following directions carefully and seemingly no issues during development. I even give them my room cleared out and set up to be butterfly friendly(no dangers or places to get stuck etc) to practice and set up a feeding station of various flowers and "nectar" mixes for them. They refused the sugar water mix the instructions told us to make so after a bunch of research I tried a few kinds including the sports drink/water combo and they really seemed to love the orange and blue ones. it's been a week now and they still are having trouble flying. I do keep them in the netted cage(bought separately) when i go to bed lest they get squashed middle of the night, but they have free flying room other than that. Someone suggested it may be because of inter breeding so much that they have development problems of some sort but I can't say for sure as they do not provide any information as to where these caterpillars came from. It has been a phenomenal experience with the kids to watch these wonderful creations God designed. Did you know they pretty much turn into a caterpillar soup in the chrysalis and then reconstruct themselves from that into butterflies? Also glad they warned us about the meconium in instructions. It really does look like blood. The little models of the 4 stages were a huge hit with my little guy. I definitely recommend having this experience, though I would be prepared to care for them their whole several weeks of life in case yours also have trouble flying and cannot be released. Still a fantastic experience to witness

Arrived fast and secured.

I have been ordering from this company for years and for the first few years we would get a cup of 5 caterpillars that would result in 4-5 butterflies. My daughter loved this experience. However, the last two years we've been getting cups of 5 that only yield 1-2 butterflies and sometimes those butterflies have damaged wings. I'm not sure what has happened in the last few years but my daughter cries so hard when they come out like this and when more than half don't come out anymore. InsectLore does have a 3-5 butterfly guarantee and honors that by sending a new cup if you provide pictures of the results, but my daughter is so sad at this point that we won't be ordering anymore from this company.

These are a great activity for children to learn about the life cycle of butterflies. We have raised these for 20 years each summer in my home daycare. The kids love watching each stage, today they are hatching, which is very exciting. Arrive quickly and in perfect condition. Typically 4 of the 5 caterpillars make it all the way to butterflies. Sometimes they all do, but on average over the years it has been 4. Be careful when releasing them as birds really like them and having kids see a bird snap one up right in front of them was a little traumatic that year. We always release near flowers so they have a food source right away.

I get these every year and they are so much fun to do!

I was more excited the. my kid :-) Super fun and educational. I gave some to my child’s classroom and kept some at home. It was magical to see the butterflies.

This item was good and they are all alive

I have been looking for 3D models of each part of the life cycle since I started teaching 2nd grade. These are perfect! They are very functional and educational because the students can manipulate them in their hands since they cannot touch the live caterpillars. They will love how fun that is! Unfortunately, we only received 2 live larvae. It looks like there may have been 2 others but they were so tiny and shriveled up that it looked like the other two’s excrement. My school orders these every year for our 9 classrooms and never has any issues with the live larvae. They do order directly from Insect Lore. My son decided that he wanted to raise butterflies this summer so it was disappointing to only get 2 caterpillars when we were expecting 5. Next time, I’ll order directly from the company. We also want to try the praying mantises next time!

I ordered 10 caterpillars, however, only 6 out of 10 made it into Chrysalis form and 3 have fell from the top of the lid attempting to latch. Now I have 3 laying on the ground of the habitat and 3 that have managed to properly latch to the lid. Because they took so long to arrive 4 died attempting to chrysalis because the box did not create the still, fragile transport that would have been required for them to latch to the top of the lid of the cup. I am hoping the 6 remaining chrysalises survive and can still hatch properly. My complaint is that they were already out of the caterpillar stage upon arrival. Timing is everything with getting to properly experience this and have it work out.

I thought caterpillars would have been great to see their stages of development. Unfortunately the perishable package was opened by CBSA and the containers with caterpillars were disturbed and they died. I will not reorder.