catching up (2)

In my last post I mentioned that the 7-spot Ladybird pupates with a series of very quick abdominal stretches. Today I managed to record that brief moment in a series of shots:

The rear end has been attached to the leaf, and the whole body is thrust violently backwards in an attempt to split the outer skin:

The larva then slowly returns to its resting position:

In these last two shots, you can clearly see that the skin has started to split along the yellow line:

I don't know how long the entire process takes, but this one was observed for perhaps 20 minutes without making much apparent progress.