These Tiny, Stunning Moths Are Only Found in One Place on Earth | National Geographic

A lot of people will think moth, and they'll think dark gray fuzzy thing that they don't want flying around their lights at night. These things don't look like that at all, and in fact, most moths don't. You say to anybody "microscopic moth," they're somewhat interested. With the naked eye, you know, it doesn't really look like anything, but when you really get in there, they're amazing. They're really beautiful.

So, they're really tiny, and when I say really tiny, I mean about the size of an eyelash. I don't just mean the length of an eyelash; I mean like the width of an eyelash. Each species of fidor is closely tied to one species of host plant. If the host plant is endangered in any way, then the moth is endangered. So, there are some fidor species that we are just now discovering that seem to only feed on really rare Hawaiian plants. Some of these only have a handful of individual plants left in the entire world.

I am worried that a lot of these guys are disappearing, and nowhere else on Earth does this organism exist. Hawaii has a long history of conservation. Even so, some places are still imperiled. It's the extinction capital of the world, and some people would go so far as to say, "Is there any point to doing this work anymore?" Unfortunately, these systems need human management, and if you were to say it's hopeless, we should give up, we know what's going to happen: native Hawaiian ecosystems would be gone.

So, there's a lot of work to be done. We got to figure out how all these things relate from there, try to inform conservation action that both protects the insects and the plants. It's difficult to find these guys. The lowland habitat is destroyed by development or invasive species, and so you have to go to the backs of valleys or distant ridge lines or isolated mountain ranges. It's helicopters, it's four-wheel drive, it's hiking for a really long time, and you have to really squeeze and fall a lot. You're searching for this plant, and you might not find it, and then you might not find the moth.

But any piece of information is critical, ranging from what island it was found on, what host plant it was tied to, how long these moths take to develop. Oh, that thing is gorgeous! It's the best thing. Thinking to myself, when you actually find one, it's here on this plant. The time, the energy, the sweat, the blood, the money that goes into all this, and you find one of those, and it's just amazing. Oh, there's another one! Give me another vial! You don't have another? Okay, okay, okay. Keep an eye on it. Where is it?

So far, for something so small, that's one part I secretly hope that will get people to care about it. They'll see another person going to these crazy lengths for this super tiny thing. Even if they think the person is crazy, they'll be like, "Who man, that guy cares about these moths!" This is a world in and of itself that deserves to be there. It's life, it's unique, and that's reason to conserve it.

The lace and alatos chicks that we're raising, they have a lot of personality. When you first look at them, you wouldn't realize how much variation there is among different birds, but there really is. Yeah, you're a feisty one, aren't you?