One of the best news sources around, The Onion, had a great post recently on endangered blue butterflies and their efforts to bring humans with them:
I think people always expected that when the time came for us to go extinct, we’d go down all quietlike—that just because we’re small blue butterflies with a wingspan of an inch, we wouldn’t put up a fight. Well, I can assure you that before my kind dies out there will be a reckoning. Blood will run in the streets. Human blood.
I swear to you on all that is good and holy that before the Karner blue goes extinct, myself and the last remaining members of my species will take out as much of the human race as we possibly can. There will be mayhem. Children will die. People will suffer.
You can take that to the bank.
I know when you look at me all you see is a pretty little insect with a taste for the nectar of wild lupine plants. Sure, you can comfort yourself with that thought, but I tell you what: You put my species’s back against the wall and you are going to see another side of this butterfly. One that has a can of gasoline, a match, and is pissed off enough to light up you and everyone you know.
Pretty funny. The full piece is here: If I Go Extinct I Swear I Will Take As Many Humans With Me As I Can
And here’s a little more on the Karner Blue from Wikipedia (in case you were curious):
The Karner Blue, Lycaeides melissa samuelis, is a small, blue butterfly found in small areas of New Jersey, the Great Lakes region, southern New Hampshire, and the Capital District region ofNew York. The butterfly, whose lifecycle depends on the wild blue lupine flower (Lupinus perennis), is classified as an endangered species. In May 2000, the Canadian Species at Risk Act listed the Karner Blue as being locally extinct in Canada.[1] This subspecies of Lycaeides melissa was described by novelist Vladimir Nabokov. It is sometimes placed in the genus Plebejus.[2]
Local conservation efforts, concentrating on replanting large areas of blue lupine which have been lost to development (and to fire suppression, which destroys the open, sandy habitat required by blue lupine), are having modest success at encouraging the butterfly’s repopulation. The Karner Blue is the official state butterfly of New Hampshire. The Necedah National Wildlife Refuge in centralWisconsin is home to the world’s largest population of Karner Blues, which benefit from its vast area of savannah and extensive lupine.
h/t Climate Progress
Image Credit: Eugene van der Pijll
