Ebright had spent most of his time exploring the world of butterflies specially the monarch butterflies. It was the only subject that struck him for the next year’s fair. He got many ideas from Dr Urquhart and worked on them one by one. Initially, he tried to find out the cause of a viral disease that killed nearly all monarch caterpillars every few years. For this, he tried raising caterpillars in the presence of the beetles, the suspected disease carrier. It didn’t give him any sound result but he won for having done that experiment.

He later tested the theory that viceroy butterflies copy monarch butterflies to save their lives from the birds. His next research led to the discovery of an unknown hormone which ultimately led to the theory on the life of cells.