Larva: Quick Facts

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Facts

Also Known As	larvae • larvas • larval phase

Photos and Videos

A banded woolly bear caterpillar (Pyrrharctia isabella) with fuzzy black and orange bands crawls on a textured wooden surface.

Indian meal moth larva

citrus swallowtail butterfly

bags of the creosote bush bagworm moth

Ox warble fly larva

Illustration showing seven types of beetle larvae, each with distinct shapes and textures, including white grub, linden borer, water-penny, aquatic beetles, carpet beetle, and buprestid larva, with scientific names labeled.

Dragonfly larva

Illustration showing the metamorphosis of the American eel (Anguilla rostrata), with seven stages labeled A to G. The top three show increasingly larger transparent larvae, followed by three transitional forms, and ending with a more developed, elongated glass eel.

Diagram showing the flea life cycle with labeled stages: white oval eggs, wormlike larvae, pupa within a cocoon, and a detailed adult flea, arranged in a circular sequence.

Axolotl wearing a green paper hat in the style of Peter Pan, with speech bubble reading “I'll never grow up!”

The role of copepods in the marine food chain

View the hatching of the cabbage white caterpillars from eggs

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Topics

leptocephalus caterpillar maggot common garden insects and their larvae brachiolaria tornaria larva amphiblastula ammocoete cyprid nauplius Molt embryo fetus Metamorphosis

Dig Deeper: More Articles That Discuss This Topic

Animal development: The larval phase and metamorphosis