What Is the Life Span of a Monarch Butterfly?

Video Transcript

"Monarch butterflies typically lives as an adult butterfly, three weeks to a month but when they migrate which is an entirely different butterfly, it emerges some as chrysalis and its make up is completely different, it's not able to reproduce, all its organs are completely reproductive so like usually migratory monarch, if you were to catch a look inside of it will not have sperm or eggs. That butterfly is almost like it's a flying chrysalis so it will migrate south and there's lots of studies being done now to tell how they actually know to migrate south. It has to do with the length and a bunch of other factors. But anyway, they'll migrate south and they'll go to Mexico and hide in the mountains and it's actually cold up there so they kind of stay where it's not going to frost, if it did frost, it will actually kill a lot of them, and they stay kind of dormant for several months. A monarch could actually live anywhere from seven to nine months, it's been recorded and when it becomes time for them to migrate north again, their body will change, they'll start being reproductive, they'll start mating and then they lay eggs on the way north. Some of them will die along the way and some actually have been recorded to actually make it all the way back."