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Chrysalis; Is it just basically unformed liquid inside?
This is what we often hear; that the inside is just mush or goo. So what is in there? When does it get there?
Although a squished chrysalis seems to be simply goo, adult butterfly parts were already forming when the caterpillar was still a caterpillar. The green liquid or fluid inside a pupa or chrysalis is butterfly blood (a cocoon is the covering of some species of moth's pupa).

Photos taken under black light (and other lights) of large swallowtail butterfly caterpillar's wing pads show that the shape has sufficiently formed to be able to tell the species of butterfly by the wing pad's shape. A wing pad in a large larva is basically an oval shaped 'gel' looking pad.
Black Swallowtail Pupating
Black Swallowtail Pupating
Black Swallowtail Pupating
Bottom side of a
pupating caterpillar/chrysalis
Eastern Black Swallowtail
Closer view with
antenna and proboscis
click photos to enlarge
Side view with
wing pads showing
Monarch butterfly chrysalis pupa cocoon
Monarch pupa chrysalis cocoon parts
Monarch pupa chrysalis cocoon
A Monarch pupa is smooth
What is inside?
After it pupates and
before it totally changes shape
you can see some of
what is inside
Monarch pupa changing shape
in the first hour after pupating
antennae and parts still visible
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All photographs on this site are copyright protected.
For permission to use any photo, please contact Edith Smith at Shady Oak Butterfly Farm.

Email edith@buyabutterfly.com
Shady Oak Butterfly Farm    Toll free 877-485-2458    12876 SW CR 231 Brooker, Fl 32622     Stephen & Edith Smith

Located 45 minutes from the Butterfly Rainforest Exhibit at the University of Florida in Gainesville, Florida

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At Shady Oak Butterfly Farm we have raised over 50 species of butterflies and moths, topping over 5,000 pupae some weeks.