← back to grid
Monarch Butterfly

common

Monarch Butterfly

Danaus plexippus

Habitat
Migratory across North America; overwinters in central Mexico & coastal California
Wingspan
100 mm
Order
Lepidoptera · Nymphalidae

Weird but real

Migrates 3,000 miles across four generations. No individual makes the full trip, but the route is genetically inherited.

Why it's cool

Children of children of children somehow know to return to the same Mexican groves their great-grandparents left.

Photographs

Butterfly
Mike's Birds from Riverside, CA, US · CC BY-SA 2.0 · source
Mariposa reposando
MariCOAP · CC BY-SA 4.0 · source