Originally published at: Costume designer makes a new wing for an injured monarch butterfly so it can fly again - Boing Boing
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45 seconds after being released…
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Initial thought: Wow.
In six months: OH GOD IT’S A HURRICAINE! WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE!!! WHY DID YOU DO THIS???
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There’s a story about a boy walking down a beach covered in thousands upon thousands of starfish baking in the hot sun. He begins throwing starfish back into the ocean, one by one. A spectator asks him why he is doing this when there are so many starfish that will perish and he couldn’t possibly make any difference to the bulk of the population. Tossing another starfish into the ocean, he replies, “I made a difference to that one.”
Will the saving of this single butterfly make any difference in the grand scale of things? No, probably not. But it made a difference to that one butterfly - and, if we ever wish to consider ourselves as compassionate beings, it was, unquestionably, the right thing to do.
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Good Humans don’t suck.
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Frankenstein’s butterfly. Franken-fly? Butter-stein?
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It appears she has created the first ever transgender butterfly by gluing a female monarch wing onto a male monarch.
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Fashion critics are considered to be such spiders.
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Well, maybe it will give the spider some indigestion?
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so wait, it’s flying around using wings that are half decomposing organic matter?
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I was wondering the same thing in a way…
Are butterfly wings not living tissue? They appear, i don’t know, vascular.
I thought that they were made from keratin (like hair and nails) that was initially inflated after emerging from the crysalis, then the vascular system shut down and left dry and ‘dead’ - hence unrepairable by the insect.
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Think old dusty butterfly collection. Wings hold up pretty well under the right conditions.
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Neat.
I need to see the dead butterfly’s organ donor card, though.
Apparently, Frankenfly is a thing?
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Fly Guy!
My kid adored those books when she was in preschool.
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We never came across them… maybe they were published after my kiddo was a pre-schooler?
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Maybe; yours is a teen approaching college age, right?
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They do indeed have vesicles, containing nerves and fluid ducts and stuff. But it appears that if the butterfly doesn’t bleed out right away, you can give it the equivalent of a peg leg - minimally functional for locomotion, but not as good as the real thing.
She can get a learner’s permit this year! Where’d the time go?
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