The Hideout: A Monarch Butterfly Mystery

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

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Alan Goffinski (0:18)

You are listening to Terrestrials.

Ana González (0:25)

From Radiolab and WNYC.

SPEAKER_1 (0:32)

Three, two, one.

Lulu Miller (0:34)

Imagine your arms morph into wings.

Orange-colored wings covered in scales that sparkle in the light. Your legs multiply. And so do your eyes. So you can see extra special light waves traveling all the way from the sun.

SPEAKER_5 (0:58)

Your face sprouts a long straw, which you use to slurp flower nectar.

Estela Romero Vazquez (1:06)

You have become the monarch butterfly.

Lulu Miller (1:12)

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

SPEAKER_5 (1:15)

Oh, yes.

Alan Goffinski (1:21)

We are the best.

SPEAKER_7 (1:23)

Bestrials.

Lulu Miller (1:24)

You got it. Terrestrials is a show where we uncover the strangeness waiting right here on earth. I'm your host, Lulu Miller, joined as always by my song bud.

Alan Goffinski (1:33)

Alan. I can't fly twice as high because butterflies have been recorded at altitudes of over 10,000 feet.

Lulu Miller (1:41)

And I'm also joined by producer bud, Ana.

Alan Goffinski (1:43)

Hi Lulu.

Lulu Miller (1:44)

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

Ana González (1:50)

And I wanted to tell you 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 in 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, as the soul of an ancestor returning from the great beyond to say hi.

Lulu Miller (2:17)

It's beautiful.

Ana González (2:21)

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 Miller (2:42)

Well, this sounds like something we butterfly-ed out.

Ana González (2:47)

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.

SPEAKER_8 (2:57)

Buenos días, compañeritos.

Ana González (3:01)

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

Estela Romero Vazquez (3:05)

Well, we are here in Angangueo, Michoacán, in Mexico, where everybody's welcome, like you, like terrestrials.

Ana González (3:14)

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 Vazquez (3:40)

Dr. Fred Urquhart, together with his wife, Nora, started tagging monarchs.

Ana González (3:45)

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

Estela Romero Vazquez (3:52)

A tiny telephone number, perhaps a couple of words, like if you find this right here.

Ana González (4:01)

Like a message in a bottle, but a message in a butterfly wing?

Estela Romero Vazquez (4:05)

Yes. They put it in the wing of many monarch butterflies.

Alan Goffinski (4:11)

Message in a butterfly wing. Flap, flap, flap, flap, flap.

Ana González (4:16)

Tiny messages flying high in the air like carrier pigeons with secret notes, except they're 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, somebody called the number.

Alan Goffinski (4:40)

I found this butterfly. It's said to call you.

Ana González (4:43)

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

Estela Romero Vazquez (4:48)

Mrs. Catalina Aguado.

Ana González (4:50)

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 younger, she'd been a shepherd.

Estela Romero Vazquez (5:02)

Cuidaba borreguitos.

Ana González (5:04)

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