Just hatched for Scale

For those of you out there, this is how small the caterpillar of the monarch butterfly is when hatched, the metal object in the picture is the sharp end of a pin. The caterpillar hatches then eats the egg sack for its first meal then move off to the young shoots of the milkweed plant. within a couple of days it develops its yellow, black and white colour scheme and as it eats the milkweed it ingests the sap from the plant which is poisoness, and thus makes it inedible to birds.