“The father is in the child concealed; the child is in the father revealed.” If this adage is ever true, it is not so in the Monarch butterfly, as pictures of the larva and adult demonstrate. Reach on for fascinating facts about the Monarch’s development.

Evidences for Design- Making a Monarch

The Monarch starts as a single pinhead-sized egg laid on the bottom of a milkweed plant leaf. If a female sees another egg on the plant, she will move on to another. Milkweed is a safe place for the egg since the plant is poisonous to most creatures. Inside the egg the caterpillar develops for 3-5 days, then eats its way out, weighing in at .00002 ounces! It has 9 rings on its body, three pairs of front legs with claws, five pairs of back legs, a mouth, stomach, and silk gland. In the next 20 days it will eat the leaf (making itself poisonous), and molt its skin 4-5 times, increasing in weight 2700 times!
Now it spins a silk pad, attaches itself to the pad with two rear legs, and hangs upside down for 12 hours. “At the end of this period in its cycle, the caterpillar begins to convulse in rhythmic jerks, breaking off its outer skin.” It sheds its 16 legs and head capsule in about 60 seconds, resulting in a green chrysalis about 1 inch long. As the caterpillar’s internal organs disintegrate, the chrysalis becomes more and more transparent.
After 8 to 14 days, the butterfly emerges from the chrysalis in as little as 15 to 30 seconds. Within 15 minutes its wings are dry and ready to fly. But what a different creature it is now! It now has only 6 legs but 4 wings and weighs a third of its caterpillar weight. No longer having 6 simple eyes , it now has two compound eyes each having 6000 lenses which can even see ultraviolet light. It no longer has a mouth to chew but has a proboscis to drink liquids. What a design! And if God can transform a striped ‘worm’ into such a different and beautiful creature, think what He can do with you and me! (2 Cor. 5:17)