Hello and welcome back to the Monarch Butterfly blog! In this blog, we will talk about a Monarch’s unique physiological characteristic. The Monarch Butterflies (Danaus plexippus) are very unique just in being themselves, but what makes them more distinguishable is that even though they are very beautiful to look at, these deceiving looks come out to a great advantage for their predators. Their predators know not to mess with anything that is a Monarch or looks anything close to one; anything with brightly colored wings. They avoid them due to their poisonous bodies. The Viceroys looks similar to Monarchs in which they too have an advantage from warding off predators. Monarchs get these toxic qualities when they first eat the milkweed when they were a larva, in which the milkweed contains toxins. These toxins stay in their bodies and becomes poison when they’re caterpillars. This poison contains a type of toxic steroid called Cardenolide in which it comes in the main form of cardenolide glycoside.  Cardenolide glycoside is a structural sugar group in which it is mainly toxic, causing cardiac arrest.  This steroid shift and transfers to the wings and the abdomen when it is a butterfly. So when either a bird, or frog would try to consume this, it would not exactly kill them, but it would cause them to continuously vomit. So….yes, these creatures are friendly indeed, just not to anything that would try to eat it. 

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Citation: 

“Monarch-Butterfly.com.” Monarchs Are Lovely, but Poisonous., Ezoic Inc., Ezoic Limited, www.monarch-butterfly.com/lovely-but-poisonous.html.

Image: 

The Butterfly Grove. “Monarch Mimic – The Copycat Viceroy Butterfly.” The Butterfly Grove, The Butterfly Grove, 20 Apr. 2015, www.thebutterflygrove.com/blogs/news/19192167-monarch-mimic-the-copycat-viceroy-butterfly.