Fall sets in motion a journey of some 3,000 miles for these monarch butterflies, which migrate from southern Canada to their wintering habitat in central Mexico. There, they cluster together in fir trees, creating the illusion of orange, fluttering foliage. They’ll remain in their winter roosts until March, when the journey back north begins. But no one individual monarch will complete the full roundtrip, which exceeds the normal monarch lifespan; instead it will take four generations of monarchs to complete the full migration, each individual seemingly driven by an internal compass that guides its flight path.
Monarch butterflies migrate south
Today in History
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World Bee Day
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Martin Luther King Jr. Day
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Palouse farmland, Washington state
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Raise your hand for Teacher Appreciation Day
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Mack Arch Rock
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Merry Christmas!
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Misool Island, Indonesia
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Observing World Braille Day in Bavaria
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Wake up, it s Darwin Day
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Where do those colors come from?
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Château de Villandry, France
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Colle Santa Lucia, Dolomites, Italy
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Floating temples in the Land of Smiles
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Surf s always up in Paia
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Vacuum Chamber 5 at Glenn Research Center
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Menton, France
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Groundhog Day arrives—beyond a shadow of a doubt
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Schönbrunn Palace Park, Vienna, Austria
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Its Halfway Day!
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International Day for Biodiversity
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Birch trees, Drammen, Norway
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Pretty poetic for a pit
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World Water Day
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Day of the Dead
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Twas a night just like tonight
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Forward-thinking women of history
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Life in a North African town
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A dying breed of tree thrives in an American park
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It s Census Day—make it count
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Dog days of summer