What Is a Life Cycle?

A life cycle simply means the stages of life.

For example, a human life cycle would look like this:

Baby

Child

Adolescent

AdultElderly

Do All Animals Have the Same Life Cycle?

Not all animals go through the same changes throughout their life cycle, but most animals go through what’s called the simple life cycle. The simple life cycle has just three steps!

• They are born (birthed or hatched).

• They are young.

• They are adults

Chicken Life Cycle

A chicken goes through a simple life cycle:

Egg Chick Chicken

Metamorphosis

Metamorphosis means that an animal goes through a very big change in their life cycle. They look completely different when they are born to how they look when they are adults! Most animals that go through metamorphosis are amphibians and insects.

Do you know of an animal that goes through metamorphosis?

AmphibiansAmphibians go through more steps in their life cycle than a chicken does.For example, the life cycle of a frog has 5 steps!

Eggs

Tadpole

Tadpole with legs

Froglet

Frog

Insects

Eggs Larva Pupa Young Beetle Adult Beetle

Just like amphibians, insects go through more than 3 steps in their life cycle too. Let’s take a beetle for example.

Life CycleThink of your favourite animal. Can you guess its life cycle?