Battling Monarch Butterflies

Title

Battling Monarch Butterflies

Artist

Eva Kaufman

Medium

Digital Art - Photographs, Painting, Digital Art, Watercolor

Description

Each summer in the United States and southern Canada, the beautiful, orange-and-black monarch butterfly can be seen flittering from flower to flower, foraging for nectar. They are the most beautiful and interesting creatures in the insect world, and they are a source of fascination for many. How much do you know about the monarch butterfly?

The female Monarch Butterfly lays tiny eggs covered with a sticky substance on the underside of milkweed leaves, which are extremely toxic. The caterpillar hatches from its egg several days later and survives on these milkweed leaves. The monarch caterpillar and adult butterfly retain the poison from the milkweed leaves in its body, thus protecting it from being eaten by predators. Every spring, adult monarch butterflies head north from their winter respite in the southern forests of Mexico and California, and return in the fall—a journey some 2,000-3,000-miles each way! The monarch butterfly will continue to feed, fly, and reproduce throughout the U.S. and southern Canada, for several generations. It is the fourth generation of monarch butterflies that actually migrate to Mexico in fall. Monarch butterflies travel as much as 100 miles a day during its 3,000-mile migration south. During its migration, each butterfly relies on the huge volume of food it ate when it was a caterpillar for fuel. Monarchs smell with their antennae. Nectar and water are tasted by the sensory hairs on their legs and feet. Monarch butterflies cannot bite, and drink through a long tongue called a proboscis that works like an eyedropper drawing up nectar. Like a retractable garden hose, its tongue coils up under its lower lip when not in use. Once the Monarch butterfly is hatched, it only lives for approximately 2–6 weeks. The monarch butterfly’s bright colors serve as a warning to predators that they are poisonous, and they should attack at their own risk!

Uploaded

May 28th, 2019

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