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

The first cup that came, all 5 caterpillars were dead. (We waited the 48 hours for them to “wake up” but they were rolled into a tight ball and pretty obviously not alive.) I contacted insect lore customer support and they were so easy to work with and sent a replacement so quickly! Second cup was perfect and they all made chrysalids and turned into butterflies and it was so fun! Want to note that this is just the caterpillars because we already have all the other stuff from the kit that we did previously, so this is just to raise them again. You shouldn’t order this if you don’t have the butterfly enclosure already.

How these little guys show up alive and thriving, I'll never know. My second time purchasing a set for the grandkids, who just love watching the development and then letting them fly. Everything in the advertising is true. We are really pleased with the set. Not too pricey.

WHAT A DISAPPOINTMENT!! My son and I have ordered these for the last 4 years and this shipment was the WORST! In the past we had enjoyed watching the teeny tiny caterpillars feed and grow until they were ready for their next phase. Not this time. They were HUGE when we got them and then they made their chrysalis within less than a week. Totally false advertisement on 5 caterpillars. We got 4 and only one emerged. You used to get a cute booklet to chart their progress. This time we got a QR code. It's evident that this company is more concerned about making higher profit margins than the overall experience they claim you'll have. This will be our LAST PURCHASE. My recommendation is go with a different group. That's our plan.

Kids Love Them!

They all lived and were released into the wild when the proper time came. No complaints.

We purchased a kit that was supposed to include five live caterpillars, but unfortunately only two arrived alive. The other three appeared to have died before they reached us. The two surviving caterpillars were healthy and successfully transformed into beautiful butterflies, which was a wonderful experience. However, it was disappointing to pay for five caterpillars and only receive two living ones. We are grateful that the two survivors did well, but we hope future customers receive the full number of healthy caterpillars advertised. Better quality control during shipping and packaging would greatly improve the experience.

Purchased these for use in my self-contained classroom. They arrived all alive and thriving on eating their 'brown mush' as my students called it! All 5 made it into cocoons and transformed into butterflies! I was surprised as I assumed we may lose one or two! The instructions were clear and helpful, and I already had a little butterfly mesh 'home' for them to be placed in. As you lift the lid to transfer the cocoon's, you do have to be careful not to let any of them fall. Overall, I was very impressed and will be purchasing again!

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.