Scientists fitted nearly 1,750 monarch butterflies with tiny solar-powered trackers

Have you ever watched a butterfly pass by and wondered where it was headed? With their distinctive colours and wing patterns, butterflies have a way of catching our attention and, lately, the attention of scientists in particular.

According to U.S. News & World Report, Rebeca Quiñonez-Piñón and other scientists are now getting a closer look at one of North America's most fascinating journeys in nature, with the help of tiny solar-powered devices attached to monarch butterflies.

Nearly 1,750 of these orange and black insects were fitted with trackers this year, helping researchers follow their movements as they travel south towards their wintering grounds in Mexico.The effort is part of Project Monarch Science, a free mobile app developed through a collaboration involving researchers and conservation organisations working across North America. While monarch migration has been studied for decades, scientists have often struggled to establish the precise routes individual butterflies take, how far they travel in a day and where they stop to rest or feed along the way.