Soo annoying!
My BST cats always used to do that on the pots!
SB

Awwww I think its kind of cute:)

*LOL* What a pickle! Good luck!

Is the Admiral cat on the sleepy orange (or similar) chrysalis? All that room and that's where he decides to do his j-thing. Just wants a buddy on the big trip.

The red-spotted purple cat is in the "J" on the spicebush swallowtail chrysalis, Bernergrrl. This has happened several times before, and both butterflies emerged successfully - I hope they both do alright this time, too.
Sherry

I have experienced it too with some of the butterflies and they all eclosed okay. But I had it happen with polyphemus cats and one couldn't get out of its cocoon and I didn't discover it until it was too late. And yes I do hate it and I also hate when they do the chrysalis thing on the rim of the enclosure so you can't open the lid. What a pain in, well you know. Murray

There must be something about that part of the cage! Another red-spotted purple is in the "J" right next to the ones in the picture. Fortunately, this one is attached to the frame, not on the poor spicebush swallowtail chrysalis. The other red-spotted purple has successfully pupated and is now a chrysalis.
Sherry

Red-spotted Purples and Spicebush Swallowtails, sigh . . .

What are you going to do? I always provided sticks/dowels for the larva to pupate on. Among other reasons so I could easily move the "JÂs" so they wouldnÂt be disturbed by other wandering cats. Most cats got the hint and used the sticks, but a few bozos always seemed to prefer the lid or the side of the cage. I simply moved them rather than tie up the cage waiting for them to emerge. IOW, it's a simple matter to move the invasive Limenitis pupa off the Papilio chrysalis without damaging either of them. In fact, when I reared any species by the hundreds for a restocking project, moving pupa was a common daily routine. I made emergence stands with rows and rows of dowels that the pupa was moved on to. The stands were placed on p-towels in larger simple cages (or even not in a cage at all depending on circumstances). Made it easy to remove/discard pupa that were not viable, prevented problems with wings not getting fully spread because of siblings bothering each other, contained the mess for easy clean up, etc.

FWIW Sherry, slight differences in environmental characteristics probably draw the cats to the same corner of the cage to pupate. Might be temperature, humidity, radiant light, air flow, scent, security or a combination of any/all of them. Easy experiment to find out would be to simply turn the cage 90 degrees and see if the preferred pupation spot stays in that corner or moves. Wouldn't move maybe if they use that corner because of scent, but probably would if for the other reasons. If for security/concealment in an otherwise blank cage they'd also probably still group together too.

L.

Larry, I'm not going to do anything much. I've provided sticks for them to pupate on time and time again, and they always choose the frame of the cage. It doesn't tie up the cage for me, I raise caterpillars in cages with chrysalids in it - there's never been a problem in that regard, the cats don't bother the chrysalids, except occasionally I see a gulf frit/Agraulis vanillae "dance" if a cat crawls over it.
The spicebush swallowtail/Papilio troilus chrysalis will probably emerge soon, since the other one in that cage that pupated at about the same time emerged this morning, a female. I might have to move the red-spotted purple/Limentis arthemis when the Papilio emerges, leaving just a shell for the Limentis to hang onto.
I just don't like the looks of it, and I worry that it might hurt the chrysalis with the cat pupating on it, but, since it hasn't so far, I'm leaving it alone - if it ain't broke, don't fix it! :)
Sherry

They are very easy to move with less danger than leaving it where it is. But to each their own.

Larry, what do you use to reattach them to the dowels or sticks. I confess that I am always afraid I will damage them because I once tried unsuccessfully to reattach a dislodged monarch chrysalis. Murray

Murray,

Monarchs are among the easiest to move as they have a fairly strong cremaster and definite silk pad that is usually small. Just take your time until you get the feel for moving them.

Since I'm a gent and don't have the greatest tool ever devised for lepidoptera that ladies have (long fingernails), I use a long pair of sharp pointed tweezers for removal. Lightly scrape the pad 90% loose with a point, grab the cremaster and gently pull the pupa free. They can be reattached elsewhere either with a piece of fine thread tied onto their silk pad/cremaster and then to the stick/dowel "loosely", glued on with a small dab of bonding cement (rubber glue) and in a pinch I've even used double backed tape or tangled their cremaster in a loose weave fabric (curtains in hotel rooms comes to mind on that last one - LOL). For species that have a support girdle, cut it first on both sides, remove the pad as with the others and just hang them verticle from their pad like with the others and don't worry about the girdle or the orientation it gave the pupa when you rehang it.

A piecs of cardboard with the paper removed from one side (to expose the ribs) is great for species that have a bare pupa not hung by a cremaster or girdle. Just lay them head to tail in the valleys between the mountains topside up. Different thickness/grades of cardboard with have bigger or small ribs for differnt sized pupa.

HTH

Larry

When I have caterpillars pupate on the mesh (square-holed) at the top of my cages (I use mostly one-gallon ice cream buckets with mesh on top for larger caterpillars), I can get a large amount of the silk pad off just by stretching the mesh on its diagonals. The mesh deforms easily in this direction, but the silk doesn't. Nymphalids seem to always prefer the mesh over the sticks that I so nicely put in for them.
-Jmcat

The red-spotted purple that piggy-backed on the swallowtail emerged day before yesterday, and the one next to it emerged this morning. The spicebush swallowtail is still there.
In another thread I described how I move chrysalides - it's very difficult to scratch the silk off the body of another chrysalis, which is one reason I leave them alone. The swallowtail still looks healthy - sometimes they take a while.
Sherry

Glad to hear it turned out ok!!

The spicebush swallowtail finally emerged - it's a girl!
{{gwi:507802}}
Sherry

Beautiful Sherry!!

{{gwi:507805}}How do you think this guy feels? Just emerged and the other one crawls over and hangs from you??

I believe I'd move the one on the bottom somewhere else to hang out! :) 'Love those polydamas swallowtails - I get to see them when I visit my daughter in Florida.
I just saw a female spicebush swallowtail laying eggs on some sassafras close to the house, inside the fence. She looked newly emerged, so I'm figuring she's the one in the above picture. A female red-spotted purple has been laying eggs on the cherry trees next to this sassafras - it's nice to have the cycle of butterfly life going on just a few feet from my house.
The first time I typed red-spotted purple on this post, I typed "red-sotted purple" - hehehe! Maybe I should rename them that - red-sotted purples! :)
Sherry

Yes I did move him away but since I had the camera decided to photograph them first. Would not have been nice if the newer one had started dripping all over the other.


This is all way cool, and my five-year-old son is really into it which is especially cool.

Hope you get lots of "red-sotted" purples!
Kelly

I definitely get cocoons made next to each other and I've learned that I need to separate them so each moth can get out. But I don't think I've ever had a chrysalis attached to another chrysalis.

KC

Another one, two friends. Ironically (this was taken a few weeks ago) the one that pupated first is still a pupa, and the second one flew away a couple of weeks ago.

{{gwi:507807}}