I took time lapse movies for 3 full days, 24 hours a day, of the monarch egg. And all the roughly 35,000 photos showed the same thing: an egg sitting on a leaf. However, I finally out-waited the egg, and got the time lapse of the caterpillar emerging.
It then went about eating the remaining empty egg, but notice it stopped and “thought” about it twice before finishing. Then it went for a walk before settling down to think about eating some milkweed.
As the video says at the end, “To be continued…” as the caterpillar goes through 5 stages of growth, becomes its chrysalis, and then emerges as the majestic monarch.