How a Tiny Butterly Does the Impossible…So Can You!

By Shlomo  Maital    

     Monarch 1  Monarch 2                       

 

   Consider the amazing Monarch butterly, shown above.  They weigh only 0.4 grams  each, on average. This is a bit more than one one-hundredth of an ounce!  Yet they are able to engage in an annual migration of some 8,000 kms. (4,800 miles!).  The trip north to coastal California and Washington from Mexico each spring requires three to four generations, as eggs are laid on the way in spots where milkweed grows, caterpillars emerge, spin chrysalises, and become butterflies. 

   How in the world do light-as-air butterflies manage to fly so far, even through three or four generations?  They are very clever at using updrafts of warm air and air currents.  How do they avoid being eaten, as they fly in large butterly clouds?  Simple.  They eat milkweed.    Milkweed contains a toxic poison. So birds avoid Monarch butterflies, easily identifiable by the coloration, because eating them gives them a stomach ache, which birds learn the hard way.   The toxic poison is called cardiac glycosides, steroids that act like digitalis and stop the heart.  Not only do Monarchs have poison, they concentrate the poison in their wings, where birds tend to attack.  Monarchs have also evolved to mimic the viceroy butterly, in coloration, which is even more poisonous.

   Monarch butterflies live only for about 30 days.  But what a 30 days!  They are the only butterfly to do a north-south migration, flying north in the spring and south toward winter.   They migrate in huge clouds of millions of butterflies, an amazing sight.

     Monarch butterflies evolved through evolution, and are   proof of how wonderfully Nature does experiments that generate incredible creatures.  There are endless miracles like Monarch butterflies.  They should all, together, make us far more respectful of the wondrous planet in which we live,  which alas we seem intent on polluting and ruining.   How much we can all learn from a tiny fragile creature that weighs nothing yet has learned to survive by making an impossibly long journey every year.