Monarch Migration

Every fall, a magical event takes place in the animal world. Perhaps traveling over your own head right now--or clustered by the hundreds in a nearby tree--the annual monarch butterfly migration to Mexico is underway. By instinct alone, the butterflies go to the same mountains that their ancestors left the previous spring. Somehow, they find a place in Mexico that they've never seen before.

 

The butterflies are born knowing everything they need to survive, so we look on with wonder:

 

* How do the monarchs know when to go to Mexico?

* How do they know which way to fly?

* How fast, how far, and how high do they travel?

* And how do they know when they have arrived--at a small speck on the planet where none has ever been before?

 

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Uploaded on October 12, 2007
Taken on October 12, 2007