Talk is cheap when it comes to supporting environmental causes, but one selfless nature lover is putting his money where his mouth is in the fight to protect a beloved species: This conservationist is attempting to save monarch butterflies from parasitic wasps by offering his son as tribute for the wasps to lay their eggs in.
Wow. It takes a noble soul to protect these butterflies by giving up that which is truly dearest to him.
The parasitic wasp species Pteromalus cassotis is a notorious scourge of monarch butterflies, steadily thinning the vital pollinators’ numbers by laying hundreds of eggs in any monarch chrysalises they can find, but conservationist David Paolillo has refused to turn a blind eye to the butterflies’ suffering. Instead, he’s set out to spare the monarchs from this wretched fate by presenting the wasps an even finer sacrifice to bear the agony of being parasitized in the monarchs’ place, offering up his 10-year-old son Michael to serve as an alternate host for the wasps’ larvae to infest. Even as tears stream down the conservationist’s own face, he’s dutifully pressing on to wrap his son in an ersatz chrysalis of bright green fabric and affix the bundle to a pine sapling in their backyard, symbolically evoking the likeness of a monarch pupa to make the nature of his bargain clear and unmistakable to the wasps.
“O great and fearsome P. cassotis, I beg you, spare the monarch butterfly from the woes of your parasitism, and rather lay your eggs in this son of mine instead!” said David in an impassioned appeal to the wasps, throwing his arms wide as he yelled into the woods behind his house. “I offer you life for life, the future of my own bloodline for the future of these fair, fluttering creatures! See what a splendid feast the boy will make for your devouring young, far richer than the monarchs’ meager pupae—come, deposit your eggs in his flesh and let our pact be sealed!”
It’s truly admirable how David’s iron conviction to preserve a healthy, robust monarch population has remained steadfast, even as his son begs him, “Please Papa, please don’t let the wasps lay eggs in me! I’ll help pollinate even more plants than the monarchs do, I promise! Please unwrap the chrysalis, I can hear the wasps coming PAPA I CAN HEAR THE WASPS!”
Even renowned conservationists like Goodall and Attenborough would be humbled by this man’s unhesitating altruism.
Having studied biology for decades, David likely harbors no illusions that having wasp eggs laid in him will be anything but a long, excruciating process for young Michael, but so selfless is his devotion to monarch butterflies that giving up a child more precious to him than anything in this world is a price worth paying to protect these iconic lepidoptera. After all, knowing that the monarch’s migratory subspecies has already been assessed as “Endangered” by the IUCN Red List, how could offering the wasps any less than his own offspring ever possibly suffice? As the buzz of arriving wasps grows deafening and drowns out the boy’s harrowing pleas, David must no doubt take comfort in the fact that the last glimpses of green fabric disappearing beneath the teeming swarm means that he’s just notched a major victory for conservationists everywhere.
It’s great to see someone really going out of their way to help preserve biodiversity like this. The next time you spot a monarch butterfly outside, stop and spare a quick thought for the man who was willing to give everything to keep them from harm!
