Over the course of a year, monarch butterflies make a massive journey of thousands of miles, from places like Canada through the United States, down into Mexico and then back again. But, as per Wikipedia, “No individual butterfly completes the entire round trip…Four generations are involved in the annual cycle…” While the journey south occurs in a single generation (this generation of butterflies has a much longer lifespan than the others), the migration north is multiple generations. Ultimately though, the monarch butterfly round trip journey is a multigenerational one, with no single butterfly returning to the origin of this journey.