Wild Facts

Photo by jkadavoor (Wikipedia)

Cool Facts About The African Monarch

• Similar to the regular Monarch Butterfly, the African Monarch has black and white stripes accompanied by yellow spots, which warn predators to stay away since they are poisonous
  
• The African Monarch possesses tiny scales on its wings, and males have a velvety, black scent spot in the middle of each hind wing, which plays an important role in the courtship process
• Luckily, due to the abundance of the African Monarch Butterfly throughout Africa, there are no conservation concerns for this particular butterfly…how about that, a good news story for once.

The Toxic Butterfly

Catching a glimpse of this magnificent butterfly requires finding a group of milkweed plants, which are usually found in the mixed acacia woodlands. If you are really interested in seeing these butterflies, I suggest checking out Gorongosa National Park as they have an abundant population of African Monarchs that park-goers frequently see. So why are they usually hanging out on milkweed plants? Because it provides them with a great defence mechanism. The African Monarch derives its poisonous nature from its dietary staple during the larvae stage. Yep, you guessed it, milkweed.  The larvae of the monarch feed on the milkweed plant and retain the plant’s toxicity as they mature into adults.  Once the larvae become adults, they can feed only on liquids, meaning their food source is typically the nectar portion of the plant.

Photo by Greg Hume (Wikipedia)

The unique ability of the larvae of the African Monarch to digest the toxic milkweed plant allows them to fly slowly and near the ground so that potential predators have ample opportunity to view the bright colours on their wings and seek food elsewhere.  This colouration of the African Monarch is so effective that other butterflies have evolved similar colourations even though they are not poisonous.

Attracting a Mate

When not scaring away predators, this butterfly focuses on finding a mate. Usually, these butterflies will breed year round and the males utilize special scent scales to attract a beautiful female partner.  After mating, the female lays her eggs on the underside of milkweed leaves, carefully laying only one egg per leaf to prevent overcrowding.  When the egg hatches, the larvae spend this entire stage of development on the underside of the milkweed leaves.  Eventually, they form a pupae from which adults emerge. This doesn’t sound like that bad of a life…if you like milkweed.

I know I have already discussed the Monarch Butterfly in recent Wild Facts but at the request of one of my readers, I have decided to do another post on them.  Can I help it if monarch butterflies have numerous interesting facts about them?!?

In the previous monarch Wild Fact we learned that these tiny little butterflies fly south for the winter (with the recent snow on the ground, I wish I had flown south too).  Let’s fast forward to their spring migration back north. Sweet, it is spring time already! This generation of monarch’s surviving from last summer knows there time is almost up so they need to lay eggs quickly.  During that northward migration, the monarch butterfly will seek out it’s number one choice for egg deposition.  This of course is none other than the Milkweed plant. I know one of my readers is aware of milkweed and has even had the opportunity to witness a monarch laying its eggs on this incredible plant.  So now, I ask the question, what is so important about the milkweed that the monarch must lay it eggs on this one particular type of plant? Any of you flower people out there will know that milkweed contain a juice that is bitter and poisonous. This is important because the monarch larvae (caterpillars) have evolved to be able to withstand this poisonous substance. But this isn’t the interesting part! The really cool part is the fact that since the caterpillar has been feeding on this poisonous and bitter plant throughout its life stage, it becomes poisonous and bitter as well. This has a huge advantage for the monarch butterfly because if any predator such as a bird tries eating the caterpillar or the butterfly it will leave an awful taste in its mouth and will learn not to eat those disgusting insects again (kind of like kids with brussel sprouts). Eventually, predators realize that the bright colours of the monarch butterfly issue a warning that they taste awful so don’t bother sampling them! This pretty little plant helps protect the monarch throughout all of its life stages.

Monarch Butterfly Fast Fact: A monarch caterpillar will grow as much as 2700 times its original size in just two weeks.  If a human baby did this it would be about the size of a bus in the same amount of time.  Imagine how much pablum that baby would need!