MONARCH BUTTERFLY, QUEEN BUTTERFLY, COMMON CROW BUTTERFLY, CATERPILLAR, BUTTERFLIES #CREATIONSCIENCE #CHRISTIAN #BUTTERFLIES #MONARCH

Beautiful Monarch Butterfly

MONARCH DESIGN BY GOD

Greetings all you good people out there! 

How is everyone doing? How is the weather there? I am well and the weather here is beautiful! My oldest daughter is having her baby tomorrow so I am about to be a new grandma. And it’s a girl this time. I’m so excited! It will be fun to dress her in all those cute baby outfits. She’ll look so beautiful!

Just like the Monarch butterfly. If you haven’t been privileged to view this beauty, check out these pictures. But did you

Monarch butterfly

know that this gorgeous insect is toxic? Listen to this interesting article the Creation Research Society put out last year…

“Enzymes are specialized proteins that make more efficient, or catalyze, chemical reactions in living organisms. Milkweed plants contain toxins called ’cardenolides,’ which, when they enter the bloodstream of most animals, they inactivate a specific…

Monarch caterpillar eating milkweed

enzyme, making the plants poisonous. 

Enter two butterflies of the Danaus genus, Monarch and Queen butterflies. These creatures possess an extraordinary ability, the ability for their caterpillars to eat milkweed plants without being killed in the process. You see , these caterpillars possess specially adapted sodium-potassium pump enzymes that are resistant

to these toxins. It allows them to accumulate large quantities

of the cardenolides within their bodies, making them and their adult butterfly forms poisonous to the many birds that would otherwise like to eat them. 

Queen Butterfly

By the way, there is another species of caterpillar, of the Common Crow butterfly, that can also eat milkweed, but it

Queen butterfly caterpillar

does not possess special enzymes to combat the toxins; it is able to excrete the toxin rapidly without its entering the bloodstream (thus these caterpillars are not able to store the toxins for self-defense).

It has been shown that Monarch and Queen butterfly caterpillars consume milkweed at the same rate as the Common Crows, and not more. Thus, the cardenolide-resistant enzyme was concluded to be present to provide Monarch and Queen butterflies with a form of self-defense from birds. 

Common Crow Butterfly

How did these insects acquire such unique defense mechanisms? Were they eating milkweed prior to acquiring the modified form of the enzyme or the ability to excrete the toxin without absorbing it? If so, how would they have survived? Or, did the Danaus species possess the adaptive form of this enzyme before they ‘discovered’ that they could eat milkweed? Either way, this specialized relationship was not formed by accident, but required incredible design.”

And why would evolution select for a caterpillar to possess the ability to eat a toxic plant but not benefit from it? That sounds more like design with a sense of humor!

Until next time, God bless and take care,

Willow Dressel

References:

O’Quinn, Jonathan C., D.P.M., M.S., Monarch Magic. Creation Matters, Vol 20, No 6, Nov/Dec 2015, p 12.