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

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.

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.

My daughter just turned 8. We got these little guys right before school let out for summer. 2 have been released this morning 3 are still cocooned up. 2 got fat pretty quick & are the alpha I suppose lol. Yeah, my little girl loved letting them go this morning. They were fully developed & healthy little critters. Glad she got to experience this. For some reason, butterflies aren't as abundant as they use to be here. Thanks for the experience.

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.

Do not buy these! There was suppose to 5 caterpillars and we only got 2. When the caterpillars turned up the food was broken in half and laying on top of the caterpillars. At first I thought they were dead but once I moved the food the caterpillars were moving. The two caterpillars we recieved grew at very different rates. The first one grew as you would expect and went into a chrysalis and came out after 12 days and was fine. The second caterpillar didn't chrysalis until 8 days after the first and when it came out of the chrysalis it's wings were not formed correctly and it can not fly. The whole experience has been very sad. We have previously used insect lore but ordered directly from their website and had no issues. If we ever do this again we will never use Amazon and recommend using insect lore directly to others.

I teach early education. Life cycles is one of our learning goals. So I purchased the larva so that the kiddos could see the changes. They loved it☺️

I’ve always used the brand called Clearwater but could not get them delivered when I wanted so I decided to try these Insect Lores! So very disappointed. Only got four butterflies out of 2 cups, which were supposed to total 10 (5 per cup). I can understand if perhaps one from each cup did not make it, but this was really bad. The Clearwater brand blows away this brand. The caterpillars grow larger and so are the butterflies. Unfortunately, disappointed and waste of money for me, especially since these were educational gifts for children which is the most upsetting part of it. I wish I could have given a great review, but these were awful. Been doing this for years and never had this with the other brand. I’m hoping for others that order these, that mine were just duds. Good luck to all who purchase these caterpillars.

I get a new cup every year. My kids have enjoyed this for three years now!Last year I did receive a cracked cup that was devastating to open with my kids as the caterpillars had all died :(They did send a new one.This year we got a cup that had 4 regular sized caterpillars and one teeny one that never developed, sadly. I know this isn't predictable sometimes. It's just sad when that happens.Otherwise, this is a wonderful experience and we absolutely love watching their process and releasing them in our yard ❤️