Missy Cat's chrysalis changes - 50mm macro lens, Canon EOS 80D

What I love about watching their chrysalis changes is the gradual appearance of color inside. I've stacked the images of her chrysalis as much as possible to try to get a seamless transition of this happening, instead of the images jumping around from the camera getting photos from slightly different angles.

The 1st shot is from a couple days before her eclose, and the 2nd shot was less than 24 hours before it happened. She surprised me in that, the morning before her eclose, her color buildup looked like she wouldn't be eclosing until 2 days later. Imagine my surprise when I decided to check on her 13 hours later that night, and saw how black her wings had gotten!

From there, I love seeing how her oranges deepen, while the black spreads from her wings and thorax to the rest of her abdomen and body. Then, after it gets to its darkest, it has the appearance of looking lighter in spots (look carefully on the video), but that's only because her body has started to pull away from the shell of the chrysalis. Just like how babies in a woman's belly will also shift positions and start getting lower, so does the butterfly inside its chrysalis. If you look really really carefully, you'll see the slightest shift in her body distribution within the chrysalis, to head towards the bottom right corner of it, where she'll be punching out.

During the final stages of her chrysalis changes, the top left part of it, where her abdomen is, starts to unfold like an accordion. This shifts the entire position of her chrysalis and how it hangs, and you can see that dramatic movement in the video between 530am and 630am. The 1st pleat always unfolds, but the remaining pleats don't always.

Once I saw the 2nd pleat starting to separate, I knew her eclose was going to happen soon. I didn't realize how soon it would happen, however, and at 732am, I took a photo that I didn't realize would be the last one before she popped out. As soon as the shutter clicked, I heard the distinctive crack of her chrysalis getting opened fully by her, and scurried to switch the camera mode to video from photo.

I was disappointed that I had missed getting that first crack on video, but was glad I was able to get the rest of it on there.

Or so I thought.

She was so fast! In less than a minute, she was out and hanging on the other side of where she had exited from her chrysalis. That's when I looked down at my camera and noticed ARGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH I NEVER HIT THE RECORD BUTTON ONCE I SWITCHED OVER TO VIDEO MODE.

Oh well. She stuck with the theme of her name, "Missy", so named because I missed her hatching from her egg because I was watching the other caterpillar right then. We hope this will also mean that predators and bad circumstances will continue to "miss" her so that she can lay as many eggs as possible.

At least me setting my alarm to get up every hour all throughout the night to take a photo of her chrysalis has resulted in this nifty video you see here. As a consolation prize of sorts, I was rewarded with the discovery that I actually got that 1st tiny crack open from her on that last photo I took, which I also zoomed in on in this musical video for you to see.

Enjoy!