Monarch Butterflies

The Monarch butterfly is the most recognizable, and the most studied butterfly with its black and orange wings that everyone loves and it’s also a milkweed butterfly. The Monarch butterfly travels between 1,200 and 2,800 miles, and it can take them two months just to finish their journey just to find the perfect temperature so that they can hibernate from the beginning of November to mid-March. Every year Monarch butterflies will fly up to 2,500 miles from their breeding ground. Now we are going to look at life as a Monarch butterfly as a caterpillar. When a butterfly lays an egg, the egg will lay on a leaf on a milkweed plant and it takes 4 days for the egg to hatch, and the caterpillar would stay in the cocoon for 8-12 days. Once a caterpillar comes out after 10-14 days it will start eating its own shell and it starts to eat more and more and they also start to grow. After two weeks the caterpillar would find a place to attach itself so that it can start the process of becoming a butterfly. A new phase is about to start and this phase is called chrysalis where it just stays in the cocoon and seems like nothing is happening but the inside of the cocoon is where the caterpillar is forming into a butterfly and once it’s time for the butterfly to come out of the cocoon it will hatch from the cocoon and spread its beautiful wings to stretch and will start eating flowers and enjoying their short life as they only live for 2-6 weeks. Then every year they will do what the other butterflies do and will continue to do that.