More than beautiful: the beloved monarch butterfly is one of the great migratory of the world | Butterflies

IMagine your body was the weight of a raisina, supported by itself a couple of fragile wings and gossamer. Now imagine having to fly for 3,000 miles, avoiding storms, highways and predators, to ensure that your species continued.

Could you do it? Unless you are a monarch butterfly, fortunately you will not have to face such a challenge.

The monarchs undoubtedly become healthy Flima della Ribalta. Their wings recognizable to orange and black are replicated indefinitely in art and people lovingly raise their caterpillars in captivity or plant their only food, Milkweed, in the hope of increasing their number.

But unlike some animals out there – we discuss later, the Panda – Monarch butterflies deserve attitude. Somehow they use the corner of the sun and the terrestrial magnetic field to guide them on their vast migrations, a journey that extends to the United States and north-eastern Canada to a small forest stain in the mountains of the center Mexico.

When they find in these wintering sites, placing their millions in Oyamel’s fir trees, the monarchs are like a single being fluttering, a wave of orange and black crest that covers the forest. When they all move at once, lifting from the branches that cling under their weight, it is like being in a waking dream. Lucky observers are able to attend one of the most beautiful places in nature.

The next generations of monarchs, in phases, then make the return journey while winter moves away, guided by their incredible navigation skills and protected by a useful cocktail of internal poisons, derived from the Milkweed, which discourages aspiring aviatory attackers.

A single monarch female can lay up to 500 eggs in his life, the starting point of another apparent miracle, that of metamorphism. Small brucchi with green and white stripes emerge from the eggs, which feed on munching leaves, transforming into pupa in two weeks. The monarch washing fades a thread of silk, just like Tarzan, on a leaf while he loses his skin and forms a hard shell.

A few weeks later, a completely formed butterfly explodes from this chrysalis. Not for nothing is the scientific name of the species Dana plexippusWhich in Greek means “sleepy transformation”.

It is a gloomy indicator of the talking state of the life of insects that even monarch butterflies, the most loved of all six -legged creatures, face an existential struggle. Last year, the United States government proposed that the species was listed as an extinction for the first time, its number went away from the loss of habitat, the use of pesticides and the incessant march of the climatic crisis.

Let’s not lose these extraordinary creatures who live ultramarathon of our life: we should instead confer them the honor of winning the invertebrate of Guardian’s year. Even if you are not a realist, vote monarch.

• Between March 24 and April 2, we will profile List of 10 of invertebrates chosen by readers and selected by our wildlife writers by over 2,500 nominations. The votes for our 2025 invertebrate of the year take place from noon on Wednesday 2 April until noon on Friday 4 April and the winner will be announced on Monday 7 April.