Queen butterfly - a monarch mimmic.

Top of wings (main) and bottom of wings (inset) of the Queen butterfly.

Yes, it even fooled me.  The first one of these I saw was the inset photo I took during my first week in Palm Springs.  The familiar orange and black stripes with white spots led me to conclude that this must be a monarch butterfly.  It was only later, after photographing the queen butterfly during my second week in Palm Springs that I was to realize my error.  From the top, the two species look fairly different, but not so much from the side.

The monarch butterfly (photograph below) feeds on milkweed plants as a caterpillar.  Milkweed contains a nasty poison that causes illness in birds and mammals if ingested in small amounts, and death if enough is consumed.  Adult monarchs retain the toxins from their larval form; any bird or mammal eating one will soon get very sick.  Birds, which have excellent colour vision, learn quickly that the orange and black pattern on monarch wings represents a stern warning.  DO NOT EAT.  YOU WILL BE SICK.  And so, these butterflies get left pretty much alone.

Monarch butterfly I photographed in 2016.

It turns out that any butterfly that has a similar pattern to the monarch will likely be left alone as birds are not willing to risk the illness and potential death that comes from eating them.  I have been aware that viceroy butterflies use mimicry to avoid the fate of becoming a meal, but I did not know there were any others.  The queen butterfly also benefits from the monarch pattern.  I was fooled by my first encounter with it.  It looks much more like a monarch from the side than from the top, and I doubt too many birds would be able to spot the difference.  

There is also another butterfly, the soldier butterfly, that looks similar to the queen.  I have not seen this one yet.  Still though, I find it amazing that there are 3 species of butterfly that mimic the monarch enough to benefit from its ecological reputation.  Cool.

Thanks for reading.

Eric Svendsen     www.ericspix.com



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