The Butterfly Lady came to Otakaro recently.

She told us lots of facts about monarch butterflies. Did you know that ...

.. boy monarchs have two black dots on their wings. Girls have no dots.

Monarch butterflies have 12 eyes, 6 on each side - but they are still quite blind so they use their antennae to help find things.

Butterflies need flowers. They taste with their feet to suck the nectar out.

If we spray, the butterflies choke and die.

They live for 6 to 8 weeks in a warm summer.

A monarch will fly to the same tree to sleep that their grandparents slept in.

We do not touch monarchs or the caterpillars because the chemicals on our hands (from soap or sunscreen) can kill them.

Wasps kill monarchs and drag them into their nests.

Girl monarchs can smell a swan plant from 2 kilometres away! So if there was a swan plant at Wairakei School and a girl monarch at the Northlands Mall, she would be sniffing and flying to it. She ONLY lays eggs on a swan plant - up to 400!

If you would like to know more about the monarch butterfly, you could watch a video.

We dressed up as monarch butterflies. We moved like a butterfly and discovered much more.

What have you learnt about monarch butterflies that you did not know yesterday?