A Monarch Hatches

The chrysalis opens…

Kirsten: Come and look.

Alan: Beautiful.

Kirsten: She hatched from that kale leaf in the teapot.

Alan: She? Looks like a male. See, it’s got a black spot on the hind wings.

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Voice-over

And the veins in the wings of the male are thinner. Sometimes gender accuracy trumps political correctness.

Magnificent Monarchs

In a garden full of wings...

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Chloe: Look. A monarch. Just hatched.

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Kate: Nice looking. Not flying yet?

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Chloe: They rest. It takes at least a couple of hours for their wings to dry and become strong enough to fly. Strong veins.

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Voice-over

Growing swan plant in the garden will attract female butterflies which carry about a hundred eggs. When they’ve laid all their eggs they die. Caterpillar eats for ten days, then sleeps in its chrysalis for a couple of weeks. Not native to New Zealand but a dash of complementary color to the green of a garden. Attractive, only eat swan plant, no threat to native flora. An ideal migrant really.

Butterfly tree

The tree fell down and was tied up again...

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Milkweed aka swan plant

Elizabeth: Why don’t you just pull it out? It’s such a raggedy growth, not pretty at all.

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Victoria: I know, but it’s the only food the monarch butterflies eat.

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Elizabeth: Can’t they eat something else?

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Victoria: They like the swan plant, it’s got toxins, scares off the predators.

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Elizabeth: Where do they go in winter?

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Victoria: Good question. Some do migrate. Fly from Eastern U.S. to Mexico. Some take three or four generations. In New Zealand there aren't such distances but some say that monarchs overwinter in Christchurch or Tauranga.

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Voice-over

Monarch butterflies. Brilliant introduced species to New Zealand, a land rather poorly inhabited by colorful winged insects. And yes, the swan plants bought from the nursery in small pots do look better formed, but an aged tree is a protectorate of multiple caterpillars.

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Moving monarch butterfly caterpillars indoors

Wrestling with terminology…

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Elizabeth: I brought them indoors to feed and turn into chrysalises. To protect them from the wasps. Was I being interventionist?

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Mary: Well, in a geopolitical sense, interventionism is an action initiated by one country in another, for military or economic reasons.

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Elizabeth: To save a country?

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Mary: Or the peace. Or for ideological reasons. Preserve democracy sometimes.

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Elizabeth: But moving caterpillars seems more like medical intervention.

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Mary: Medical intervention is the treating of patients as passive recipients of treatment to help them live longer, or at least to give an impression of doing everything possible.

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Elizabeth: And caterpillars are not patients. So how about regarding the saving of caterpillars as ecological intervention?

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Mary: That was a Greek political party name.

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Elizabeth: Intervention ecology?

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Mary: More to do with restoration activities. Making things as they were.

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Elizabeth: Yeah. Monarch butterflies were introduced. So were their enemies, the wasps. Species management?

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Voice-over

Elizabeth the naturalist. Mary the terminologist. Is moving introduced caterpillars away from introduced wasps interventionism? Or not? Suggestions?

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Butterfly Wreck

A small tragedy. 

See it? Hanging onto the leaf? A butterfly wreck. And here’s part of a wing. Bird strike I think.

What makes you blame a bird?

Cats can’t climb up there. My hypothesis is that the butterfly was feeding on the flowers, and a bird swooped, but didn’t like the taste. Monarch caterpillars eat milkweed, very alkali. Predators don’t like the taste.

Didn’t help that one.

No, the attacker didn’t like the taste, spat him out, but by that time the damage had been done. Death of a butterfly.

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Voice-over

A small tragedy in nature. Pity the butterfly was mistaken for food.  A death in vain. Needless. Not easy persuading everyone that the decline in beautiful species is bad for the planet.

Some butterflies escape with only damaged wings. These can be repaired. There is an instructive video showing how to repair monarch butterfly wings at live monarch.

Not everyone feels butterflies are inconsequential fluttering ephemera. Some attach symbolic significance to them. Others regard them as important scientific phenomena. 

Long live monarchs! Butterflies that is!
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Butterfly Effect, Chaos and Catastrophe Theories

Lorenzo Monarch and Tiger Moth discuss theories

Lorenzo: You’ve heard of the butterfly effect?

Tiger Moth: You’re telling me that Monarchs rule the world? That one flap of your wings here in Mexico and you set off a maelstrom in Mauritius?

Lorenzo: Chain of events sets off a crisis far away. Chaos theory.

Tiger Moth: And you’ll be aware of catastrophe theory?

Lorenzo: A steady state that suddenly experiences change? It’s a branch of chaos theory.

Tiger Moth: Have you thought about how these apply to us? Today we choose to sip nectar from this bush, the bird misses us and we live. Tomorrow, we sip nectar from the next bush, the bird sees us and we’re dead. Catastrophe.
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Voice-over

Lorenzo Monarch is good at giving definitions. An abstract ability. Tiger Moth excels at giving examples. And makes it personal. But can either of them solve non-linear equations?