Insect LoreCup of Caterpillars Basic – 5 Live Painted Lady Caterpillars with Food – Refill Kit for Butterfly Garden Habitat – STEM Science Activity for Kids & Classrooms

We get these yearly. Kids love the tradition. Past couple years only 4 caterpillars have made it, however. That's always kinda sad. Still a fun project for the spring. They love it so much we got two cups this year.

I will never buy a cup of caterpillars through Amazon again. We have done this every year with my kids and have always ordered from the Insect Lore website, but this time I used Amazon because we wanted the cup quicker to show some friends who were staying with us. This was a big mistake. Every other year all 5 caterpillars have become butterflies and it has been such a fun experience for out kids! This year however when we got the cup, one caterpillar was already dead on arrival. A couple days later another caterpillar that was way smaller then the others on arrival also died. Still 3 were alive and eventually started making their chrysalis. One died before it could form it's chrysalis and fell to the bottom becoming a big pile of goo. 2 of the caterpillars have formed chrysalis and we have moved them to our big net. One of the them looks normal, and one of them is black, so I don't have much hope we will have more then 1 butterfly, and that's even debatable since all of them have died. The cup smells foul now that we have taken the lid off to put in the larger net, so I am wondering if the food was diseased or something.We do this every year and did everything according to the instructions, the only thing different this year was ordering through Amazon. I guess correlation doesn't always mean causation but in this case it's making me only ever want to buy through the Insect Lore website. I'll have to look and see if we still get the guarantee buying through Amazon.

Great. All 5 caterpillars alive and progressing to butterfly. Worth money

We love watching the butterfly cycle every year. 2 of the chrysalises never made it to butterflies, but that is sometimes expected. We still had 3 beautiful butterflies to release this year

This is the second cup of caterpillars I’ve purchased from this company. The underside of the lid has textured air-permeable cloth they’re supposed to be able cling to and hang from as they change to chrysalids and emerge as butterflies. The first time, they fell from it into their food. I moved them to the bottom of the enclosure and only 3 of the 4 (they shorted me a caterpillar) survived. Currently I have 5 chrysalids on the bottom of the enclosure because all 5 fell from the lid. I’m hoping they all make it - two were lying in the moist food for a few hours because they fell during the night, so I’m not sure how they will do. All five are on the bottom of the enclosure that I lined with paper towels. I’m hoping they’ll all make it. It’s amazing to watch the caterpillars rapidly grow, but it’s stressful when they fall because I’m worried the entire time about their survival. Please improve the lid.

This item came with five caterpillars they have all cocooned the educational value is awesome and it is fun for my daughter good quality for the money but I hate to say it my daughter was so discouraged when one of them came out of their little cocoon deformed see we were wanting to let them all go not have to keep one but no matter the difference she said she'll take care of it as long as it lives sad story the other butterflies are attacking it another sad thing is you might want to move them two days after they all have gone up to the top to make their little cocoons because one of them decided it wanted to hatch 3 days after when I was trying to wait the 3 days to put them on the top but like I said one hatched the day we were supposed to move them all into the habitat we woke up that morning was getting everything ready to move them over and one was a butterfly in the little kit

My nieces love these. I usually get one of them some of these every year. I always look for the Insect Lore caterpillars because they always arrive in great condition. For the first 12 hours or so, the caterpillars seem sluggish. (I would be sluggish, too, if I had just been shipped over the road for hours to days.) Then they start to rouse themselves and get busy. We love these. The process is wonderful to behold. I've also gotten these as a gift for a housebound elderly person in the family, and it was really a blessing to see how much joy it brought for that person to be able to watch this process right next to their chair all that time.

For the first time, I was disappointed in our caterpillars. I've bought caterpillars from insect lore for about 7 years. This year, only 4 caterpillars became a crysalis...and only 2 hatched...one with damaged wings and wasn't able to fly.