I’ve written before about how my plant got attacked by caterpillars : The Attack of Caterpillars on Pokok Susun Kelapa
This time I noticed there were 3 brown caterpillars eating the curry leaves. So I quickly snip the small branch of the curry plant and put them inside an old plastic aquarium.
For those who are interested to breed your own butterflies, make sure you have ample supply of the same kind of leaves where the caterpillars first eat. In my case, I was fortunate because I can simply buy curry leaves and feed them when those leaves on my plant ran out of supply. They will not eat other kind of leaves apart from the one that the mother butterfly first lay her eggs and eventually will shrivel and die.
After they eat enough, they will turn into cocoons like the one in the picture. Notice that one didn’t survive and fell out from the branch.
Oh, another tips..make sure you put the leaves together with branches or stalks so that they have place to hang their cocoon.
After about 4-5 days, the cocoon will break free and out emerge the beautiful butterfly.
Once they start flipping their wings, which means it is already dry and ready to fly, set them free.
Oh, do you know that on average, some species of butterfly has an adult life cycle of 2 weeks or less. Some only live for 2 days. Interesting, right?