page_title: Flight of the Butterflies
section_title: Synopsis
hierarchical_section_title: Flight of the Butterflies / Synopsis
caption_attribution_description: English: Photograph of a Monarch Butterfly
context_page_description: Flight of the Butterflies is a 2012 Canadian documentary film directed and co-written by Mike Slee for 3D IMAX, starring Megan Follows, Gordon Pinsent, and Shaun Benson. The film covers Dr. Fred Urquhart's nearly 40-year-long scientific investigation into the monarch butterfly, tracking the details of what is considered one of the longest known insect migrations: the flight of the monarch butterfly from Central Mexico to the United States and Canada and back.
context_section_description: Monarch butterflies are a familiar sight in the United States and Canada most of the year, but disappear from most locations in winter. The documentary film weaves together factual information about the monarchs with a dramatic re-enactment of the search for the answer to the mystery of where they spend the winter. The story line follows Urquhart as a child in Canada, fascinated by the butterflies; his years of research and study, together with his wife and collaborator Norah, into their life and migration; and their recruitment of a pair of amateur naturalists in Mexico to search for and ultimately find the butterflies there, concluding with his time decades later as a senior scientist looking back at his investigations and discoveries about the insect's life pattern. In addition to finding the overwintering sites, he discovered that it takes two or three generations for the monarch butterflies to reach the Canadian breeding grounds, while one much-longer-lived "supergeneration" makes the 2,500-mile (4,000 km) return trip south into central Mexico.
caption: Female monarch
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