Insect Lore Cup 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

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.

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.

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

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 always order from insect lore and have always had good experiences. Overall, this cup of caterpillars was good and my students enjoyed getting to see the life cycle. I gave 4 stars because the cup came with my caterpillar already dead.