Community Lens for Aug. 16

According to Owlcation.com, Janet Hanser’s is probably of a monarch caterpillar. One of the best-known butterflies in North America, the monarch is famous for its astounding winter migration across half a continent to the piney mountains in Mexico. Monarch caterpillars sport many narrow bands of black, yellow, green and white. They also have four distinctive ‘antennae,’ two on each end. The monarch caterpillar eats only milkweed plants, which have a toxic white sap that flows when a leaf or branch is broken, giving the plant its common name. It’s thought that this species takes on the poison of the milkweed’s leaves, which protects it from predators; since the big orange butterfly is toxic, other butterflies try to copy it. This is called mimicry, and there are many species that look like the monarch for this reason.