{"id":203281,"date":"2025-10-10T15:53:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-10T15:53:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/203281\/"},"modified":"2025-10-10T15:53:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-10T15:53:07","slug":"emergency-butterfly-wing-transplant-is-a-success-watched-by-millions-on-social-media","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/203281\/","title":{"rendered":"Emergency Butterfly Wing Transplant Is a Success Watched by Millions on Social Media"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-223895\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Sweetbriar-Nature-Center-via-Storyful-1024x577.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"696\" height=\"392\"  \/>Sweetbriar Nature Center \u2013 via Storyful<\/p>\n<p>With a pioneering procedure, a nature center in New York made sure that a broken wing wasn\u2019t the end of one monarch butterfly\u2019s journey.<\/p>\n<p>Famous for migrating from Mexico up to Canada, a Deer Park resident found one of these orange beauties stranded with the upper section of its right forewing broken.<\/p>\n<p>Janine Bendicksen is the director of wildlife rehabilitation at the Sweetbriar Nature Center in Smithtown, NY, and she had to think fast when a woman brought in the injured monarch.<\/p>\n<p>There were many monarchs inside Bendicksen\u2019s vivarium, and wondered if maybe she could find a dead one and transplant its wing onto the injured one. Sure enough, a late resident was available as a donor.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt was so intricate, because this butterfly could fall apart if I pressed too hard,\u201d Bendicksen <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/newyork\/news\/monarch-butterfly-wing-transplant-sweet-briar-nature-center\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">told CBS News<\/a>. \u201cWe used contact cement, we had corn starch, a little piece of wire that we could hold the butterfly down with.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The one easy part was that butterfly\u2019s have no nerve endings in their upper wings. There are no blood vessels either.<\/p>\n<p>The procedure was recorded on the center\u2019s social media page, and it produced a viral response with over a million views\u2014all to see this little insect receive the most delicate of helping hands.<\/p>\n<p>MORE BUTTERFLY NEWS BITES:<\/p>\n<p>To Bendicksen\u2019s mind, this was the first time anyone had ever tried to transplant a butterfly wing onto another butterfly, and true to that assessment, her phone began to receive calls from entomologists from all over the West Coast.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m getting calls from Minnesota, Costa Rica, California,\u201d she said. \u201cThis butterfly would have died if we didn\u2019t try. We need hope in this world today.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>WATCH the video below\u2026\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>   <a target=\"_blank\" title=\"@abcnews\" href=\"https:\/\/www.tiktok.com\/@abcnews?refer=embed\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">@abcnews<\/a> <\/p>\n<p>An injured monarch butterfly was able to continue its migration after undergoing a wing transplant at a nature preserve in New York.<\/p>\n<p> <a target=\"_blank\" title=\"\u266c original sound  - ABC News\" href=\"https:\/\/www.tiktok.com\/music\/original-sound-ABC-News-7559018802332125982?refer=embed\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">\u266c original sound  &#8211; ABC News<\/a>    <\/p>\n<p>SHARE This Story Of A Monarch Butterfly On The Mend\u2026\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>    <script async src=\"\/\/www.tiktok.com\/embed.js\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u00a0 Sweetbriar Nature Center \u2013 via Storyful With a pioneering procedure, a nature center in New York made&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":203282,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[64,63,71775,8167,1025,128,1369,23228,4050,338],"class_list":{"0":"post-203281","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-compassion","11":"tag-insects","12":"tag-new-york","13":"tag-science","14":"tag-surgery","15":"tag-transplant","16":"tag-viral","17":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203281","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=203281"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203281\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/203282"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=203281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=203281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=203281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}