Baby Backpacks on Butterflies at the EPCOT International Flower and Garden Festival

Disney4me · 2025-05-12T15:07:18Z

Some groundbreaking research is taking flight at the EPCOT International Flower and Garden Festival to protect one of the most beloved insect species, the North American monarch butterfly. These colorful insects are wearing teeny, tiny baby backpacks!

Well, sort of.

These radio telemetry tags, or “backpacks” as our Conservation Team calls them, are roughly the same size as a tiny grain of rice!

“They use that same radio frequency, just like our phones,” said Morgan, Disney’s Conservation Programs Manager and one of the lead researchers focused on the monarch butterfly. “It’s the same type of tech that has been used for a bunch of different animals. It’s just now for the first time, small enough to use on teeny, tiny, little insects.”

But what exactly is our Conservation Team studying? Monarch caterpillars’ favorite food, milkweed! The backpacks allow our conservationists to track the monarchs’ movement and preference for their favorite food so we can learn more about their taste for different types of milkweeds.

What’s The Difference?

A major threat to the monarch butterfly species is their increasing exposure to a parasite commonly known as OE, which monarch butterflies can be exposed to from eating tropical milkweed.

While native milkweed dies back in the winter, tropical milkweed does not. So, when monarch butterfly larvae hatch on the tropical milkweed leaves, they ingest high levels of leftover OE that has built up over time. OE negatively impacts almost every aspect of butterfly life, and research estimates that about 80% of Florida monarchs have the disease.

Disney Conservation Director Dr. Zak is the Program Lead for the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA) Saving Animals From Extinction (SAFE) Program for the monarch butterfly, which has been adopted by over 100 other AZA-accredited facilities nationwide. The SAFE program for monarch butterflies seeks to recover and sustain monarch populations by fostering healthy breeding and migratory environments and provide them with safe places to be dormant for the winter.

Dr. Zak’s guidance and direction is just another example of Disney being a leader and trailblazer in species conservation and working hand in hand with the AZA.

“Disney is really a major player when it comes to the impact we can have on wildlife through our science and our subject-matter expertise that we have by being part of the AZA community,” said Dr. Zak.

Dr. Zak’s team intends to share the knowledge gained from this research with other partner AZA facilities so they too can provide the best habitats for monarch butterflies.

Where To See This Research?

Perhaps the best part of this cutting-edge research is the fact that guests can see it for themselves at the EPCOT International Flower and Garden Festival. Guests can view the process every Tuesday at 9:30 a.m. outside Butterfly Landing, located near Journey Into Imagination With Figment in World Celebration.

Keep a sharp eye out to see if you can spot the baby backpacks on these beautiful monarchs!

For the latest updates on the monarch butterfly and all the animals at Walt Disney World Resort, follow Dr. Mark Penning on Instagram and Disney’s Animals, Science and Environment Facebook page.