A monarch butterfly carrying a tiny tag developed by Cellular Tracking Technologies at the Cape May Point Arts and Science Center in New Jersey, which helped fund a monarch tagging project.Credit...Video by Hannah Beier
Posted on 11/19/2025 4:51:38 PM PST by E. Pluribus Unum
Scientists used tiny new sensors to follow the insects on journeys that take thousands of miles to their winter colonies in Mexico.
A monarch butterfly carrying a tiny tag developed by Cellular Tracking Technologies at the Cape May Point Arts and Science Center in New Jersey, which helped fund a monarch tagging project.Credit...Video by Hannah Beier
For the first time, scientists are tracking the migration of monarch butterflies across much of North America, actively monitoring individual insects on journeys from as far away as Ontario all the way to their overwintering colonies in central Mexico.
This long-sought achievement could provide crucial insights into the poorly understood life cycles of hundreds of species of butterflies, bees and other flying insects at a time when many are in steep decline.
The breakthrough is the result of a tiny solar-powered radio tag that weighs just 60 milligrams and sells for $200. Researchers have tagged more than 400 monarchs this year and are now following their journeys on a cellphone app created by the New Jersey-based company that makes the tags, Cellular Tracking Technologies.
Most monarchs weigh 500 to 600 milligrams, so each tag-bearing migrator making the transcontinental journey is, by weight, equivalent to a half-raisin carrying three uncooked grains of rice.
“There’s nothing that’s not amazing about this,” said Cheryl Schultz, a butterfly scientist at Washington State University and the senior author of a recent study documenting a 22 percent drop in butterfly abundance in North America over a recent 20-year period. The movements of monarchs and other flying insects are cloaked in mystery, and “now we will have answers that could help us turn the tide for these bugs.”
Tracking the world’s most famous insect migration may also have a big social impact, with monarch lovers able...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
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There are two kinds of 1st World countries. Those that have landed men on the moon, and those that use the metric system exclusively.
But you know what we can’t track, right New York Times? Huh? Huh?
Probably borrowing the same technology they used to find all the Jan6 people.
What’s cool is visiting the national park in the state of Michoacan, Mexico where they enter.
What’s cool is visiting the national park in the state of Michoacan, Mexico where they WINTER!
Farmers are not enthusiastic about growing weeds.
Yer damn skippy.
Yep, they never seem to be going anywhere in particular.
This was a tiny patch for the fireflies to breed and the butterflies to flutter.
Now they look out over their smooth green lawns and say, "what happened to all the bugs"?
What indeed.
Now this is the kind of interesting semi-useful government spending I can get behind. We could do lots of this stuff just from the FRAUD found in the SNAP program.
But we do not know the location of mllions of illegal aliens.
The Butterflies probably wish all these busy body do gooder people would just Bug Off, stop messing with their wings.
To their own demise! Give me the metric system any day.
Astroturf is the answer to everything.
Our little piece of dirt has several weed patches. I am trying to bring in native plants as I find them. Not always easy. But we do have milk weed.
And lots of fireflies in the summer.
We have had a milkweed patch for over 15 years. This year is the first year we have had Monarch caterpillars in more than 10 years. At one point, there were 14 monarchs in process. Interesting to watch. If it matters, it has been 3 years since they took the roundup ready crops out of the adjacent fields. A wealthy man bought the farm fields with the idea of farming but he is too busy to get around to taking care of them.
And using computer power equivalent to that found in a Nintendo 64, built by William “D-Fence” Fosters wearing short sleeve white shirts, skinny ties and birth control glasses, using slide rules USAUSAUSA!
Yayy White Guys!
First, why?
Second, I think decades of people following monarchs already know.
It’s like “we can now follow the swans going to Capistrano”.
Which is legend.
Swallows.
Birds of a feather. Actually thought I typed it that way.
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