The ‘butterfly effect’ — used as a metaphor to illustrate the ‘chaos theory’ — has it that a butterfly flapping its wings in one part of the world could set off a chain of events that could culminate in a storm thousands of km away.
There is no evidence that butterflies produce storms — if it were true, you’d be having storms all over all the time.
But it is folly to dismiss that little, colourfully winged insect as humble just because it is tiny.
Recent research has shown that at least one variety of butterflies, Vanessa cardui, does something you’d never give it credit for — cross the Atlantic Ocean.
A study, published in Nature Communications, tracked the migration of the ‘painted lady butterflies’ from West Africa to French Guiana in South America — a distance of 4,200 km. The finding was the result of a complicated study that involved genomics, pollen grains attached to the legs of the insects, isotopes of hydrogen and strontium that lay embedded in their wings, coastal field studies and wind trajectory modelling. With these, the researchers concluded that for 85 per cent of the flight, that would have taken 5-8 days, the butterflies were assisted by winds; for the other 15 per cent, they used the small amount of fat stored in their bodies for energy.
But that is not all. Using isotope study, the researchers have inferred that the natal origins of the butterflies were in Europe, implying that during their lifetime, the butterflies moved from Europe to West Africa and then, across the Atlantic to French Guiana.