A few days ago, Dr Marcin Sielezniew from the Institute of Biology, University of Bialystok, saw a monarch butterfly in front of one of the buildings in Bialystok – informs Katarzyna Dziedzik, press spokesman of the Białystok University.

Monarch butterfly, in Latin Danaus plexippus, it is a butterfly from the Nymphalidae family. Every autumn, millions of these insects leave the northern regions of the US and Canada to overcome 4,000. km and spend the winter in the warm mountains of Mexico or California. However, the question arises, how the monarch found the way to Poland?

It is known that sometimes individual butterflies are found in the British Isles, driven there by winds across the Atlantic. In addition, the monarch butterflies can be dragged to southern Spain, where their settled populations occur, and on the Canary Islands – says Dr Marcin Sielezniew.

According to the biologist, the most likely hypothesis is that the monarch butterfly comes from a breeding farm, from which it escaped or was deliberately released.