Incredible Journey

More about Incredible Journey

Each fall, tens of millions of monarch butterflies migrate up to 3000 miles from the Northeastern US and Canada down to their wintering grounds in Central Mexico. Tagged monarch butterflies have been found to travel over 250 miles in one day. The migration is due to the fact that monarchs can’t survive the cold northern winters, unlike other butterflies that can survive as larvae, pupae, or even as adults in some cases. The monarch is the only butterfly known to make a two-way migration, similar to birds.
One of the enigmas around this phenomenon is how millions of infant butterflies who have never been to their ancestral breeding grounds return to the very trees that their parents roosted in before they were born.