Download Monarch Butterfly Klea

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A monarch butterfly has orange wings with black wing veins and outer margins. It has small white spots on the outer edge of the wings and three orange patches on the top of the forewings. Its body is black with white spots.

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The monarch butterfly lives all around the world. It lives in various climates such as tropical areas and subtropical areas. It can live in meadows, fields, marshes and cleared road sides. During the summer the monarch butterfly is seen in Canada and the United States.

Milkweed plant

A butterfly eating nectar

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As caterpillars they eat their own egg shells and as adults they eat milkweed leaves. Milkweed is a poisonous plant that will cause will cause other animals to get a stomach ache. Monarch butterflies drink nectar from many flowers.

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Monarch butterflies, like all butterflies, can only sip liquid food using a tube-like proboscis, which is a long, flexible tongue used for sucking nectar out of plants.

A monarchs colours tells predators: “Don’t eat me! I’m poisonous!”

Male monarchs are distinguished from females by the blank spot on each hind wing.

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The butterflies get their toxins from a plant named milkweed which is their only source of food.

• Monarch butterflies can fly up to 3000 miles before stopping. • Beware! The monarch butterfly is a poisonous butterfly!

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Scientists have found that fewer monarchs are returning each year due to natural disasters that are taking place in their Mexican wintering grounds. The milkweed that the monarchs eat is being reduced each year due to logging. The logging has greatly reduced forests where these butterflies roost (nest). Efforts to protect these lands are helping but illegal logging still takes a toll. Since 1983, the International Union for Conservation of nature has listed the monarch migration as a threatened phenomena.

We can help protect the milkweed that the monarch butterflies eat. We can raise awareness about illegal logging to help protect the butterflies habitat.

The end!