A rare white monarch butterfly has appeared in Missouri! Learn what would cause a monarch to be white, and where you can travel to see one.
Rare White Monarch Butterfly Spotted in Missouri
Do butterflies celebrate Halloween? After a unique (and rare!) sighting in Missouri, we have to wonder. Here’s why a “spooky” white monarch butterfly is making headlines — and where you might spot one of these unique butterflies for yourself.
Missouri’s Ghostly Monarch
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In October 2025, Missouri Department of Conservation’s natural history biologist Amanda Gehin spotted a once-in-a-lifetime monarch… and it came with an eerie tale. According to a Facebook post, the story started when Amanda saw a whitebanded crab spider preying on a monarch butterfly. Grim, especially for those of us who care about helping monarchs — but ultimately, predation is part of nature and an essential piece of the larger food chain.
The spine-tingling twist arrived when Amanda returned to that same place… and there, she spotted a white monarch butterfly. Spooky! As the post points out, it’s almost as if the white monarch was the “ghost” of the unlucky creature who fell into the spider’s clutches. Even more surprising, though, is the existence of the white butterfly and its appearance in Missouri.
Why Is This Monarch Butterfly White?
Similarly to albino or leucistic birds, white monarch butterflies are relatively rare. While they’ve been spotted on other continents and within the United States, reported sightings are few.
Interestingly, white monarchs — called nivosus — appear more frequently in Oahu, Hawaii, than in other locations around the world. While the exact cause of the more abundant Hawaiian population isn’t known, hypotheses suggest it evolved from an ability to escape predation by the red-vented bulbul. These birds typically snack on orange monarchs, but they leave the white ones alone. As a result, white monarchs became more common in Oahu.
These gray-white monarchs aren’t separate from the classic orange butterflies, either. They’re the same species: they just display different coloration as a result of inherited recessive genes.
As to how this butterfly made it to Missouri, we can only speculate. Some redditors and Facebook monarch enthusiasts have reported white monarchs among those raised in captivity. It’s possible the Missouri monarch was the result of random chance — or that it was transported in from somewhere else. Whatever the case, it’s a stunning sight.
READ ON: Are white hummingbird sightings rare?
Sources
- Monarch Watch, “The White Monarch“
