Oklahoma City Zoo Scientist Explores Headless Butterfly Phenomenon

Headless monarch (Photo Credit: Kristal Waltrous/OKC Zoo)

OKLAHOMA CITY (KOKH) — The headless horseman is out and headless butterflies are in.

An Oklahoma City Zoo scientist is studying the headless butterfly phenomenon.

In a paper published in the journal American Entomologist, Dr. Emily Geest, a Conservation Scientist at the OKC Zoo, described the “Marie Antoinette” phenomenon in Monarch butterflies that continue to function without a head.

“When it first showed up, I thought, ‘Well, that’s weird.’ And then it kept showing up, which means maybe there’s something to this,” Geest said. “The big question is: is this because they’ve lost their heads, or is it genetics?”

Geest first thought the headless monarch she saw in 2017 was a one-in-a-million occurrence, but realized with millions of butterflies flying around, one-in-a-million isn’t that rare.

Headlessness isn’t limited to Monarchs.

An 1879 article in the journal Nature described a Painted Lady that laid eggs a day after a bird removed its head.

Geest said butterflies have a decentralized nervous system, meaning their brains aren’t only in their heads, but in their ganglia, which is a cluster of nerve cells.

“If one piece is lost, the body and nervous system can continue functioning, albeit for a short time—the insect has a substantially reduced capability to avoid predation and find food, and no ability to ingest any food it may stumble upon,” Geest wrote in her paper.

Some people have documented Monarchs with perfect wings as if they came out of their chrysalis without a head, which leans towards the idea it could also be genetic.

Soon after the paper came out, Geest received a video of a headless monarch that had just come out of its chrysalis.

“It’s weird and it’s strange, but that’s insects,” Geest said. “It highlights how unique invertebrates are from vertebrates.”