It must wait for its wings to dry before it flies away. Once out of the pupa, the damp butterfly inflates its wings with blood stored in its abdomen. The entire egg-to-butterfly process, called metamorphosis, takes about a month. After 9 to 15 days, a fully formed butterfly emerges. This vase-shaped case starts out green with shiny golden dots and slowly becomes white, then see-through. To become a pupa, also called a chrysalis, a monarch larva attaches itself with silk to a leaf or branch, sheds its skin, and forms a hard shell. They are then ready to transform into pupae. For about two weeks, they eat constantly and grow by shedding their skin. From these tiny, round eggs come small green-and-white-striped caterpillars, which feed on the milkweed leaves. The males then die, while the females head north, depositing eggs on milkweed plants along the way and eventually dying themselves. Toward the end of winter, the monarchs in Mexico and California mate. Scientists aren't sure how migrating monarchs know which way to go, since they only live a few months and none makes the journey more than once. Some estimates say up to a billion butterflies arrive in the mountains of Mexico each year. These international travelers return to the same forests each year, and some even find the same tree that their ancestors landed on. They continue until they reach Southern California or central Mexico, nearly 2,500 miles away! Every fall, as cold weather approaches, millions of these delicate insects leave their home range in Canada and the United States and begin flying south. The most amazing thing about monarch butterflies is the enormous migration that North American monarchs undertake each year. An animal that eats a monarch butterfly usually doesn't die, but it feels sick enough to avoid monarchs in the future. I'm poisonous." The butterflies get their toxins from a plant called milkweed, which is their only food source in the caterpillar stage. A monarch's brilliant coloring tells predators: "Don't eat me. Females have thicker veins in their wings. Their markings include bright orange wings covered with black veins and rimmed with a black border and white dots. Monarch butterflies live in North, Central, and South America as well as Australia, some Pacific Islands, India, and Western Europe.
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