Monarch butterfly

Eastern North American monarchs migrate south each autumn to Florida and Mexico, covering thousands of miles, and return north in spring over several generations.1

A female monarch can lay eggs weighing up to her own body mass in total, even though each egg is only about 1/1000 of her mass.1

Fewer than 10% of monarch eggs and caterpillars commonly survive to adulthood, because of weather, predators, parasites and disease.1

Monarchs can develop from egg to adult in as little as 25 days in warm summer weather, but may take as long as seven weeks in cool spring conditions.1

A monarch caterpillar can travel up to 10 metres from its milkweed plant to find a safe place to pupate.1

The monarch was the first butterfly to have its genome sequenced, a draft of 273 million base pairs containing 16,866 protein-coding genes.1