[TERRESTRIALS INTRO]

LULU MILLER: Three, two, one! Imagine your arms morph into wings.

ESTELA ROMERO VASQUEZ: De color anaranjado.

LULU: Orange-colored wings, covered in scales.

ANA GONZÁLEZ: That sparkle in the light!

LULU: Your legs multiply—pop pop pop. And so do your eyes—pop pop pop—so you can see extra-special light waves travelling all the way from ...

ESTELA ROMERO VASQUEZ: The Sun.

ANA: You face sprouts a long straw, which you use ...

ESTELA ROMERO VASQUEZ: Va a comer comer comer comer comer.

ANA: ... to slurp flower nectar.

LULU: You have become ...

ESTELA ROMERO VASQUEZ: La mariposa monarca—a monarch butterfly.

LULU: Now is the time when I make you sing the theme song with me. You ready?

ESTELA ROMERO VASQUEZ: Oh yes!

LULU: "Terrestrials, Terrestrials. We are not the worst, we are the ..."

ESTELA ROMERO VASQUEZ: Best!

LULU: " ... Bestrials." [laughs] You got it!

LULU: Terrestrials is a show where we uncover the strangeness right here on Earth. I'm your host, Lulu Miller, joined a always by my songbud ...

ALAN GOFFINSKI: [sings] Butterfly in the sky ...

LULU: ... Alan.

ALAN: [sings ] I can't fly twice as high, because butterflies have been recorded at altitudes of over 10,000 feet.

LULU: And I'm also joined by also producerbud Ana.

ANA: Hi, Lulu!

LULU: Hello! And Ana, you are bringing us the tale today of this black and orange butterfly, the monarch.

ANA: Yeah. And I wanted to tell their story now as the leaves are starting to turn orange and the holiday of Dia de Muertos—or Day of the Dead—is just around the corner. Because in many indigenous traditions from what is today Mexico, the sudden appearance of the monarch butterfly around this time of year has long been seen as a sort of spirit.

LULU: Hmm!

ANA: As the soul of an ancestor returning from the great beyond to say hi.

LULU: Oh, that's beautiful!

ANA: And the thing is, scientists, too, have looked to the monarch and wondered about a different kind of mysterious crossing, because throughout the year monarchs appear in one place, and then another, and then another, crossing over the land until they disappear. And for centuries people wondered where were they going?

LULU: Well this sounds like something we butter-flyind out. [laughs]

ANA: [laughs] Yes. And a wild story awaits, and it all begins when I landed in the mountains of central Mexico in a classroom full of kids.

ESTELA ROMERO VASQUEZ: Buenos dias compañeritos.

KIDS: Buenos dias!

ANA: To meet their teacher for the day: a butterfly expert named Estela.

ESTELA ROMERO VASQUEZ: Well, we are here in Angangueo, Michoacán, in Mexico, where everybody's welcome, like you, like Terrestrials.

ANA: And Estela explains that monarchs puzzled scientists in the United States and Canada because from their vantage point, every winter the butterflies just vanished into thin air. Which, of course, could not actually be what was happening. So to figure out where these monarchs were disappearing to, a couple of scientists back in the 1950s came up with one of the funniest experiments I've ever heard of.

ESTELA ROMERO VASQUEZ: Dr. Fred Urquhart, together with his wife Nora, started tagging monarchs.

ANA: Specifically they captured monarch butterflies and glued this little paper message onto their wings.

ESTELA ROMERO VASQUEZ: A tiny telephone number, perhaps a couple of words like "If you find this, write here."

ANA: Huh!

ANA: Like a message in a bottle but a message in a butterfly wing?

ESTELA ROMERO VASQUEZ: Yes. They put it in the wing of many monarch butterflies.

ALAN: [singing] Message in a butterfly wing, yeah! Flap flap flap flap flap.

ANA: tiny messages flying high in the air like carrier pigeons with secret notes—except they are tiny butterflies. Year after year, butterfly after butterfly, these little notes flapped around, going who knows where. And then one day after 20 years of nothing ...

[phone rings]

ANA: ... somebody called the number.

[CALLER: I, uh, found this butterfly. It said to call you?]

ANA: It was the husband of a woman who had grown up not far from Estela.

ESTELA ROMERO VASQUEZ: Mrs. Catalina Aguado.

ANA: Who had a pretty good idea where the monarchs went, and who offered to show the scientists if they wanted to come down. And Estela's mom, she could have led them there too, because when she was little, she'd been a shepherd.

ESTELA ROMERO VASQUEZ: Cuidaba borreguitos

ANA: And would walk through these mountain forests all the time, grazing her sheep with her siblings. And when the weather got cold, she knew to steer clear of certain patches where her sheep would be scared of the fluttering mass of butterflies.

LULU: Whoa! There were enough butterflies to scare sheep? I've never heard of butterflies being scary.

ANA: Mm-hmm.

ESTELA ROMERO VASQUEZ: One of the most extraordinary phenomenons in the animal kingdom.

ANA: And Estela got to see it for herself for the first time when she was just nine years old.

ESTELA ROMERO VASQUEZ: It was very snowy, and it was not easy to drive up to these elevations.

ANA: These mountain forests are 10,000 feet in elevation! The air is thin.

ESTELA ROMERO VASQUEZ: As we walked into the forest, we reached a spot, and I can only remember that all of a sudden all around was extremely silent. Everybody was very quiet. No one moved. So I touched my mother, and asked her, "Mom, I cannot see anything." This is strange. This is so, like, foggy, gray, dark. And mom said, "Shh, keep quiet! Can you see the branches of these trees in front of us bending down, almost touching the ground?

ANA: And suddenly, Estela realized what she was looking at.

ESTELA ROMERO VASQUEZ: The whole forest is monarchs.

ANA: Monarch butterflies, coating these massive pine-like trees all around them.

ESTELA ROMERO VASQUEZ: They are all wrapping the trees from bottom to top. The trees were looking like—how to explain this? Like smoky. There was no single branch free. No, it was all monarch butterflies.

ANA: Hundreds of thousands of monarchs, huddling against the cold. Estela almost couldn't believe it. Like a hidden oasis, just miles from where she lived everyday, a spot where it seemed like all the monarch butterflies in the whole world were hiding.

ESTELA ROMERO VASQUEZ: We were all impressed. But mom, who had been born up there in those mountains, told us this has always been there. They appeared in the fall, and then as the winter was over and it started to get a little more sunny, they disappeared. And this happened every year, all our lives. Why should this be important?

ANA: But it was very important to the scientists, who were finally able to study the monarchs in this hiding spot that Estela's mom and neighbors had long known about.

LULU: Huh! And Ana, did people have any idea why it was there? Like, why the hiding spot there? Why would so many butterflies from all over, like, cram themselves into this one little hiding spot way high up in the mountains?

ANA: Yeah, well that was monarch mystery number two. And to get some answers, I figured I should go see this place with my own eyes.

VALDO: Buenos días.

ANA: [panting] Buenos días.

ANA: If I sound out of breath, it's because I am. I am hiking straight up this super steep trail in the middle of Mexico on a mountain with a guide named Valdo, who is basically running laps around me.

VALDO: Para mi que ando aquí diario, este, el escalón se cansa más de aquí.

ANA: Valdo is showing me through the forests that wowed Estela back when she was a little kid, which have now become an official monarch butterfly refuge and world heritage site.

ANA: There's a bit of open sky, and just, like, hundreds of them flying in the sun. Ooh!

ANA: Every step up the mountain we get closer to the heart of the sanctuary, and we see more and more orange wings.

ANA: Even if I could breathe right, I'd still be breathing heavy because it's so cool.

ANA: And finally, at the very top of the mountain, I see what I've come here to see.

ANA: Oh, wow!

ANA: Everywhere I look, it's monarch butterflies draped on every tree branch. 

ANA: There's so many butterflies, the branches are bending under the weight of them. Like when—like under snow. Like when it snows really heavily. But it's just butterflies.

VALDO: [laughs]

ANA: And It turns out these trees underneath the butterflies ...

ESTELA ROMERO VASQUEZ: Oyamel tree. O-Y-A-M-E-L.

ANA: ... these towering evergreens with dark green needles and thick trunks only grow at certain elevations in the mountains and are a huge part of the reason butterflies go so out of their way to be here.

ESTELA ROMERO VASQUEZ: Only the oyamel tree generates the kind of microclimate.

ANA: A microclimate, like a tiny protected space where the tree controls the temperature and humidity.

ESTELA ROMERO VASQUEZ: As temperatures drop, the tree warms up a little bit.

ANA: And the monarchs huddle on its branches for warmth.

[BUTTERFLY: Mmm, so cozy!]

ANA: If temperatures get a little warm and steamy, the oyamel trees seem to stay kind of cool.

[BUTTERFLY: Ahh, nice and fresh!]

ANA: And today, as the sun shines down through the oyamel trees, the butterflies dance in its light, like the golden leaves of autumn somehow taking flight off of their branches. Some even land on me! And I whisper so I don't scare them off.

ANA: I have a butterfly on me right now. Can everybody tell i have a butterfly on me right now? I'm not gonna look at it and disturb it.

ANA: I ask Valdo how many butterflies he thinks are here.

ANA: ¿Cuántas mariposas piensa que están aquí?

VALDO: [laughs]

ANA: Milliones?

VALDO: Muchas. Millones.

[VOICEOVER: A lot. Millions. Just imagine the number of butterflies in each cluster. Each butterfly weighs half a gram. Sometimes the branches fall off from the weight.]

ANA: Wow!

VALDO: Yes.

ANA: Wow!

VALDO: Yo que diario ando aquí, cuando veo el sol así ...

[VOICEOVER: Even though I'm here every day, seeing this whole spectacle, it's still really moving.

ANA: Sí. Yo también. Sí.

LULU: Wow! It is so stunning to picture this, like, natural cathedral full of millions of panes of orange stained glass that are real and flying. [laughs] When we come back, more beauty. We got glitter, magnets, and a scientific quest to understand how these beautiful little butterflies pull off a seemingly impossible feat of migration, which is that they make a journey that takes longer than most of them live! Right after this short break.

LULU: Terrestrials is back, and we find ourselves in a cloud of sparkles, twinkling down from the sky, as school children literally throw glitter upon Ana's head.

ANA: Yeah, on my second day in the mountains, I was feeling pretty shaky from there being a lot less oxygen at that altitude than I'm used to. I couldn't catch my breath, I felt like I might pass out.

LULU: Whoa!

ANA: So I had to lay down. And some of Estela's very sweet students tried to revive me with glitter.

LULU: [laughs] What a lovely thought to try to bring someone back with glitter. Did that actually work?

ANA: You know, the scientific glitter-ature is still out on whether this officially works as a cure for altitude sickness, but what I will say is that it felt like my body was feeling just how improbable this journey is for a butterfly. I mean, I could barely handle the altitude without seeing spots and feeling weak, but these little critters the size of a Post-It note not only power thru the altitude, but they fly through wind and rain, traversing thousands of miles on a journey that takes two or three months, which is way longer than most monarch butterflies even live. So how do they do it?

ESTELA ROMERO VASQUEZ: It's like a relay race.

ANA: A relay race across generations.

LULU: Huh? What does that mean?

ANA: This is what is so incredible, and so unlike most other animal migrations. Each butterfly only gets part of the way before passing away, but the baby caterpillars it leaves behind are born knowing exactly where to keep going.

LULU: What?

ANA: Yeah. And to try to get a sense of how on Earth this is possible, we asked you, our listeners, to be our eyes and ears on the ground, to see if we could track this relay race in real time.

LULU: I could not be more excited for this!

ANA: Yeah. You ready, listeners? On your marks, get set, go! First, in winter, you spotted the butterflies here in the oyamel trees in Central Mexico.

CHILD: Yo la he visto por allá arriba.

ANA: When the weather warmed up, that was their cue to start flying north.

CHILD: I saw a monarch butterfly at school yesterday, it was heading towards the big kid garden.

ANA: You tracked them as they flew through places like Texas and Louisiana ...

CHILD: There's a monarch on my milkweed right now.

ANA: ... where they searched for the perfect fluffy flowering plant to lay their eggs.

CHILD: Milkweeds are the best for them.

ANA: Milkweed!

ALAN: Got Milkweed? [sings] It's not a weed, it's not made of milk/it's a flower that smells like candy but tastes like poison. Blech!

ANA: See, when monarch eggs hatch into caterpillars, they eat the milkweed, and then to anyone trying to eat them, they taste like poison, too!

ALAN: Blech! More like cater-puke-r.

ANA: After a couple weeks, each caterpillar transforms and kind of dissolves into a green, transparent sac called a chrysalis, like a packet of caterpillar goop that sticks to the bottom of, say, a leaf, until eight to fourteen days later, orange and black wings burst out, dry themselves off, and whammo! A new monarch butterfly.

ALAN: [sings] It's called metamorphosis!

ANA: This is what we call the first new generation.

LULU: Huh!

ANA: And they pick up the relay.

LULU: Oh!

CHILD: Hi, I'm Charlie. I saw a butterfly. It was a monarch butterfly. It was so beautiful!

ANA: As we got further into spring, you tracked them as they flew further north, through Kansas and Missouri.

CHILD: Today I saw a monarch butterfly on a purple cauliflower.

ANA: After a few weeks, they did just what their parents did: eggs, milkweed, caterpillar, goop-ify, butterfly, northy-fly.

CHILDREN: We saw a monarch butterfly!

ANA: You spotted this second generation in Illinois.

CHILD: Two or three butterflies.

LULU: Whoa!

ANA: In Maryland!

CHILD: And it was flying around and it wouldn't stop.

ANA: Flap, flap, flapping north.

CHILD: It was flying, and ...

ANA: Then eggs, milkweed, caterpillar ...

CHILD: Caterpillars!

ANA: ... goop-ify, butterfly, northy-fly.

CHILD: We saw a butterfly. It had a tail on it.

ANA: As spring headed into summer, you spotted the third generation.

LULU: Another baton pass!

ANA: Uh-huh.

CHILD: I'm looking at a milkweed with three monarchs on it.

ANA: Flying through Wisconsin and New York.

CHILD: I saw a monarch fly on Fire Island at the beach.

CHILD: I liked it because it had lots of colors.

ANA: Still flapping north.

CHILD: I saw a monarch that my dad scared and it landed on a pine tree.

ANA: You tracked them all the way to Canada!

CHILD: I saw a monarch. It almost flew into my head!

ANA: One of you even spotted one in the middle of a lake!

CHILD: All of a sudden, I saw this, like, orange thing fluttering. Whoa! Where is this thing going?

ANA: And you witnessed the birth of the fourth generation.

LULU: Wow!

CHILD: And it hatched out.

ANA: Eggs, caterpillar, goop-ify, butterfly, but as summer starts to wind down ...

CHILD: The monarch was hanging upside down.

ANA: ... these butterflies do not northy-fly.

CHILD: He just flew away.

ANA: Instead, it's time for them to make their great big U turn and fly south.

CHILD: Bye!

LULU: Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Wait. But this feels like such an extreme change of course, to pull a U-ie?

ANA: Yeah it's amazing! Because this is the last leg of the relay, and this generation flies the whole way home to Mexico by themselves!

LULU: Whoa!

ANA: And that's why they are called ...

ESTELA ROMERO VASQUEZ: The super generation.

ALAN: Bah bah bah bah!

LULU: Wait, but how does one butterfly make that whole journey south? Didn't you just say it takes, like, three generations to make the same distance north?

ANA: Another excellent question, Lulu.

LULU: [laughs]

ANA: Let's ask that one to a scientist.

PATRICK GUERRA: They're in this condition called diapause.

ANA: This is Dr. Patrick Guerra, and he's spent a long part of his life studying monarch butterflies. And says the super generation enter this state, it's called diapause.

PATRICK GUERRA: So their reproductive system is shut down, and they devote all their energy to just being able to fly. And they keep fat stores so they can survive while they're overwintering in the cold of Mexico.

LULU: Whoa! So they can just save all their energy for, like, flying and, like, muscling up?

ANA: Yeah, pretty much. And it makes these butterflies literally like the hulk butterflies. Like, they can actually be bigger than the other ones.

LULU: What?

ANA: Yeah, they're beefy, hulky bulky butterflies.

LULU: Wow! [laughs]

ANA: This whole thing, the journey of the northy-fliers and the southy-flier bulky hulky butterflies, this is called ...

ALAN: [sings] Generational migration!

ANA: So a family of butterflies makes the journey over time to better their chances at survival. And monarch butterflies are not the only insects to do this. You've got painted lady butterflies, two types of dragonflies, something called hoverflies. They all make this relay race of a journey across the globe. And human beings also make these migrations, too—for work, or to keep their families safe and get new opportunities in life. They go to new countries. They travel far distances. In fact, groups throughout North America actually use the image of the monarch butterfly on posters for their campaigns to support the right of human beings to immigrate and migrate across borders.

LULU: Wow! I hadn't realized the monarch was this mascot for migrant rights.

ANA Mm-hmm. They're this symbol of resilience and perseverance.

LULU: Hmm, that's really awesome. Okay, but I still have a question about the butterfly migrations. Like, we know how people make these incredible journeys—they use communication and tell each other where to go, pass each other maps, take planes or buses. But how do the butterflies do it? Like, how does a baby wake up and just know where they are on the map, like, whether they should fly north or south or east or west? How are they just born knowing where to go?

PATRICK GUERRA: They can use the Earth's magnetic field.

ANA: Dr. Patrick Guerra again. He's what they call a neuroecologist.

PATRICK GUERRA: And I had my own lab where we studied basically how small brains make sense of the world.

ANA: Like monarchs.

PATRICK GUERRA: When we did this indoors in these experiments in these butterfly treadmills ...

ANA: Wait, I'm sorry. Did you say butterfly treadmills?

PATRICK GUERRA: So it's basically this big barrel.

ANA: Okay.

PATRICK GUERRA: And what we'd do is we'd tether the butterflies to this beam, and they can only see the sky above them. It just keeps flying, but it's not going anywhere.

ANA: And then Patrick and his team would simulate the pull of the Earth's magnetic field all around the butterfly, because the earth is basically a big old magnet in that there's an invisible force, kind of like gravity, that operates at different levels of intensity between the north and south poles.

ANA: Antarctica and ...

PATRICK GUERRA: Is the South Pole and the Arctic is the North Pole.

ANA: Okay, and that's where Santa Claus lives.

PATRICK GUERRA: Depending on who you ask. He's probably in Canada somewhere now.

[SANTA: Ho ho ho! This year, you're all getting magnets!]

ANA: And animals like sea turtles and birds and whales and even some fish can sense this invisible force and use it to guide them to the places that they like to migrate to.

PATRICK GUERRA: You almost have a magnetic GPS. It's like you get—each place on the planet has a unique magnetic signature. And it changes over time as the magnetic field changes over time, but overall, each part of the planet has a specific magnetic signature.

ANA: And these bigger animals, they live for years, so they can show future generations how to make this migration that they make multiple times in their lives. And they remember the magnetic GPS. But the super generation of monarch butterflies? Not only have they never flown south to Mexico before , but it hasn't been done for four generations!

PATRICK GUERRA: It's their great-great grandparents have been there. And it's those instructions that have been passed down genetically.

ANA: Like a map that's somehow buried in their DNA.

LULU: Whoa, eerie!

ANA: Which, Patrick says, is a mystery still stumping scientists today.

PATRICK GUERRA: We don't know how monarchs actually go, "Okay, magnetic field, it's time to do this." It's just that we know they do it, but until we develop the right experiment that allows us to go, "Oh, that's what they're doing," we won't know until then.

ANA: Whoa!

ANA: But magnetic migration aside, one of the monarchs greatest powers might be the way that they remind us that even things that appear far apart are actually connected, because in order for monarchs to survive we all have to work together, each looking after the species native to our own backyards, whether that's milkweed, oyamel trees, or flowers full of nectar to fuel the monarchs' journey. Which is why Estela now matches kids in the United States and Canada with her students down in Mexico, and they become sort of penpals, mailing each other letters and drawings of butterflies.

ESTELA ROMERO VASQUEZ: And since our schools in the mountains have no Wi-Fi, this has been the only way for our local new generations to know that protecting these ancestral Oyamel trees is extremely important, so now, these new generations connect each other and this is all the whole web of life.

ANA: Monarchs have been part of this web of life since before people even existed.

ESTELA ROMERO VASQUEZ: Since ancestral times, perhaps millions of years.

ANA: Which means that for as long as human beings have lived in North America, they've witnessed the monarchs soaring overhead, effortlessly linking past, present and future. And each October, as Day of the Dead approaches and Estela readies her altar with framed photos of her departed family members, friends, pets, cempasúchil flowers—which we call marigolds—and simple meals like mole and tamales, she thinks of a very special person—her mother. The one who knew about the monarch butterfly colonies before any scientist and who passed away just a few years ago.

ESTELA ROMERO VASQUEZ: Only a few days after mom had departed, as I was thinking of mom and our favorite flowers and how we enjoyed seeing them blooming, a monarch appeared and was just two meters in front of me.

ANA: Oh!

ESTELA ROMERO VASQUEZ: And she was, you say, lingering?

ANA: Yeah.

ESTELA ROMERO VASQUEZ: For several seconds around, and then she—she left.

ALAN: [sings] Las mariposas. Las alas se caen del peso. Las mariposas, las mariposas. It's a celebration of life. I see you flutter by. Las mariposas, las mariposas. Casting double heart-shaped shadows in the sky. Mystical connection. Imaginemos. Flutter, flutter by, flutter. Bye, little butterfly. Flutter, flutter, bye. Flutter, bye, little butterfly.

LULU: [sings] Thank you, Alan Goffin-sky! [laughs] Great song, Alan Goffinski. And hey, if you want to help the monarchs to keep fluttering by, to keep them going strong in their migrations, there is a really cool way that you can. We have linked right here in our show notes in your podcast app. We have resources from the World Wildlife Fund and the National Wildlife Federation, all about monarchs. That even includes a way that you can order milkweed seeds specific to where you live that you can plant to help keep those monarchs fluttering by. And that is it. There's nothing else cool about to happen.

BADGER: Excuse me, I have a question.

BADGER: Me too.

BADGER: Me three.

BADGER: Me four.

LULU: The Badgers! Listeners with badgering questions for the experts.

ANA: You ready, Patrick?

PATRICK GUERRA: Yes!

KAYLA: Yo me llamo Kayla y tengo 10 años. Quiero una pregunta de saber que ¿cómo las mariposas hacen sus casas?

ANA: Kayla age 10 asks: Do monarchs build homes or nests?

PATRICK GUERRA: So unlike moths, the monarch butterflies, they don't build a home.

ANA: Certain moth caterpillars, it turns out, build these intricate log cabins out of twigs. They are bonkers! Check them out. Just look up bagworm moths. But monarchs, explains Patrick ...

PATRICK GUERRA: They don't build a nest, or they don't build a hive. What they really do is they basically find a place to perch, for example, at night, and they just lie there. But overall, they're looking for what we would describe as microhabitats. So they don't build their habitat. Like, they don't adapt their environment to fit them. They're looking for places that are suitable to what they need.

ANA: Oyamel! Might as well live here all winter long.

CHILD:

ANA: Good question: How do monarchs drink water?

PATRICK GUERRA: They don't really drink water, per se.

ANA: They don't?

PATRICK GUERRA: They drink nectar.

ANA: Oh!

PATRICK GUERRA: The proboscis, its like this long tube that they can insert in flowers to drink the nectar. But there's been some evidence that monarchs will do something that's called puddling, where sometimes if there's a puddle on the ground, they'll drink the water because it has, like, salts and it has other things that their body needs.

ANA: Oh!

ANA: Salty stagnant water. It does a body good!

JESUS ALEXANDER: Hola me llamo Jesús Alexander. Tengo 11 anos. Y mi pregunta es si las mariposas se mojan.

ANA: Jesus Alexander 11, asks: Do monarch butterflies get wet. and what happens?

PATRICK GUERRA: So they do get wet, but I have seen a monarch, when it was a complete downpour out of the sun, just get hit by big droplets and just fall to the ground.

ANA: Oh no!

PATRICK GUERRA: But it was fine. After a few hours or minutes, depending on how—when it stops raining, it shakes it off and it—they dry off.

CHARLIT: Charlit. Tengo 9 años. ¿las mariposas duermen?

ANA: Charlit, nine years old asks: "Do butterflies sleep?"

PATRICK GUERRA: That's a good question. So we're trying to figure—we're trying to answer that question.

ANA: So you don't know?

PATRICK GUERRA: Don't know the answer.

ANA: Scientists of the future? Got a sleeper hit of a question for you to tackle!

CAMILA: Me llamo Camila y tengo nueve años. Y mi pregunta es ¿cuánto bebes tienen las mariposas?

ANA: Camila, nine years old, asks: How many babies do they have?

PATRICK GUERRA: So it depends. You can get a female who will lay sometimes hundreds of eggs, and it all depends on if they hatch successfully. Like, I'm not sure the exact number, but more than five, less than a million.

ANA: [laughs]

JOSE MIGUEL: Soy José Miguel y tengo 10 años y mi pregunta ¿cómo se comunican?

ANA: Jose Miguel, 10, asks: How do monarch butterflies communicate?

PATRICK GUERRA: People think visually they communicate. They look at the patterns on their wings. There's some evidence, at least in caterpillars, they can communicate by, like, thumping on the plant, like drumming.

ANA: Wait, caterpillars thump on plants like drumming?

PATRICK GUERRA: Yeah, they'll hit it with their feet and stuff like that, or with other parts of their body.

ANA: What?

LULU: And then it wouldn't be a jug band, but a bugband—nyah!

ANGELINA: Soy Angelina, y tengo 9 años. Y yo tengo la pregunta de ¿qué hacen las mariposas dentro del capullo?

ANA: And then Angeline, nine years old, asks: What do they do inside of the chrysalis?

PATRICK GUERRA: So basically, what happens is you have your caterpillar, and then it sheds its skin and forms its chrysalis. Well, I don't want to call it magic, but it's metamorphosis. So what they do inside the chrysalis is basically creating all the parts that allow them to become an adult butterfly.

LULU: I think that is the best place to leave it. And I won't tell you that one time, many years ago, when I rode my bicycle all the way across the country with my friend, any time we would smell a bad smell, like roadkill, sadly or, like, manure or poop coming up down the road, we'd smell it, and then without a doubt, there would always be butterflies congregating around the little dead animal corpse or the big pile of poop or pee. And it turns out that butterflies do this. They are creepy little creeps. They love poop and pee and dead bodies for the salt in those things. The salt in the pee. The salt in the poop. The salt in the blood. Because they need salt to help power their wings. And so yeah, while monarchs don't usually do this because, you know, they're classier, they prefer stagnant water, many butterflies love them some poop, dead bodies and pee.

LULU: Terrestrials was created by me, Lulu Miller, with WNYC Studios. Today's episode was reported and produced by Ana González, with sound design by Mira Burt-Wintonick. Our executive producer is Sarah Sandbach. Our team also includes Alan Goffinski, Natalia Ramirez, Tanya Chawla and Joe Plourde. Fact-checking by Hilary Elkins.

LULU: Support for Terrestrials is provided by the Simons Foundation, the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations and the Templeton Foundation. Thank you!

ANA: Special thanks to Simon Close for being the English voice of Valdo, and also to Estela Romero Vasquez and Susan Meyers. If you want to learn how you and your kids or students can participate in being monarch butterfly penpals with kids all over North America, you can check them out at SymbolicMigration [dot] org.

ANA: Muchísimas gracias a todos los estudiantes de la Primaria Mariano Jiménez en Ocampo, Michoacán México.

LULU: Oh! And that sound means it's time to celebrate the September birthdays of our Explorers Club members. Alan, are you as ready as a butterfly?

ALAN: Yes!

LULU: To flutter by?

ALAN: Yes!

LULU: With birthday names?

ALAN: Yep!

LULU: Ready Ana?

ANA: You know it! Ada, Abigail, Amara ...

LULU: Antonina, Ari, Augustus, Briar.

ALAN: Two Cassidys.

ANA: Charlotte, Clara, Cooper.

LULU: Damien, Daniel, Dante, Eleanor, Eloisa, Eric, Felix, Fina, Flora, Grey and Hannah.

ALAN: Maybe it's Hannah.

LULU: Henry, Hudson, Hunter, Harper

ANA: Another Henry! Istari.

ALAN: Jack.

LULU: Joshua, James.

ALAN: Jean.

ANA: Juniper, another Juniper! Monarchs do not lay their eggs in juniper trees but another butterfly does! It's called the juniper hairstreak!

LULU: Keenan, Leo, Leila, Lincoln, Liam, Logan and Luke.

ANA: Liza and Lorelei. Madeline

ALAN: Or Madelin?

LULU: Masy, Mackenzie, Natalia, Nuria, Malcolm, Miles, Nora, Owen, Orion, Ozma, Oz.

ANA: Poppy, Ronnie, Rowan and Desi.

ALAN: And Ruairi and Ruby and another Ruby!

LULU: glittering in the light. Sebastian.

ANA: Shay.

ALAN: Shepherd, Stone.

ANA: Trinity, Wesley, Wyatt, Xavier.

ANA: And a happy belated birthday to Ellis!

ALAN: Happy birthday!

ANA: We hope you are fluttering around and eating lots of butter on your birthday.

LULU: Want a birthday shout-out, and slightly off-key singing from me and Ana and Alan and other cool persons? Find out how you can join the Terrestrials Explorers Club by just clicking the link in our show notes! You can just clickety-click. That'll do it for today. Thank you so much for listening. See you in another spin of this dirty old planet of ours. Bye!

WINONA: My name is Winona. My age is seven-and-a-half. And I have a joke for you guys. Why did the guy throw butter out of his window? He wanted to see a butterfly.

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