Roger Van Deven, age 10, of St. Ann, Mo.,
What butterfly looks like the monarch
Some of Naturets children protect themselves by pretending to be what they are not. In the world of insects, there are little fellows who look like dead twigs or dry leaves. This trick is called mimicry and it fools many a hungry enemy. Birds tend to find some insects less tasty than others and a few of the small morsels seem to taste downright horrible. A wise bird eats or:ly one of these bad‑tasting insects and shuns other insects that even look like it.
From all reports, birds detest the taste of the handsome monarch butterfly and leave him alone. They tend to avoid other butterflies which look like the monarch without bothering to find out how they taste, The viceroy butterfly looks so much like the monarch that it takes careful investigation to tell them apart, though, to a bird, a viceroy makes good eating, Birds seldom, however, dare take a chance and many a viceroy escapes because he mimics or copies the appearance of the monarch.
Both the monarch and the viceroy have big, beautiful wings of brownish orange, beautifully veined, and bordered with dark, velvety brown. When you place them side by side, you can see that the monarch is a little larger, with fewer dark veins and more orange. The dark borders of his wings are rimmed with a double row of white dots and the tip of each front wing is freckled with specks of red, orange and white.
The dark borders of the viceroy's wings have a single row of white dots which, on the front wings, form a question mark, The backwings of the viceroy have a dark vein inside the border which the monarch does not have. The big monarch can be found all over the country, but collectors west of the Rockies find the viceroy hard to come by.
The adult monarch and viceroy are copycats, but in the early stages of life they are very different from each other.
The viceroy caterpillar is a pale, stubby little fellow with a pair of furry horns, He feeds on poplar or willow trees and spends the winter rolled up in a leaf. The monarch is a milkweed baby and the caterpillars look for all the world like chubby little tigers, striped with black, white and yellow. When finally full of milkweed, the little tigers sleep a while in pale green crysalises which look like rolled‑up milkweed leaves.
Several generations of monarchs and viceroys develop during the summer season. When fall comes, the adult viceroys perish. But flocks of the sturdy monarchs migrate hundreds of miles to warmer climates and a few ragged members return to their old homes across the country in the spring.