- The monarch butterflies’ greatest feat is their migration ritual, flying south like flocks of birds. Starting in late summer, some individuals endure a 3,200-kilometre (2,000-mile) voyage from their extreme northern range in Canada to overwintering grounds in Mexico.
- Fossil records reveal that butterflies once lived with the dinosaurs— roughly 150 million years ago.
- Although the Butterfly Effect is best known as a 2004 Ashton Kutcher cult movie classic, the concept of the butterfly effect first originated from MIT meterologist Edward Lorenz, who in his 1972 paper wondered if a tiny event, such as the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil, could create widespread consequences elsewhere, such as a tornado in Texas.
- Butterflies generally have thin bodies, brightly coloured wings and knobs at the end of their antennae, whereas moths have fatter bodies, camouflaged wing colours and pointed or hairy antennae.
- One female monarch can lay up to 500 eggs—ouch!
- Two very different monarchs appear on the sold-out, full-colour, 2005 Canadian 50-cent silver coin produced by the royal Canadian Mint—the orange monarch butterfly on the obverse and the monarch Queen elizabeth II of england on the reverse.
- Milkweed, the monarchs’ main source of food, contains toxins that accumulate in their bodies overtime—making the butterflies emetically poisonous to predators.
- A tasty alternative, the viceroy butterfly, protects itself from predators by mimicking the colours of its poisonous doppelgänger.
- The most-performed opera in North America is Giacomo Puccini’s famous tragedy, Madame Butterfly. Tickets to the performance at the Winspear Opera House in Dallas, Texas, range from $64 US for back- seat bleeders to $425 US for premium orchestra.
This article first appeared in the Summer 2010 issue of Canoeroots Magazine. For more great content, subscribe to Canoeroots’ print and digital editions here.
