Searching for a Butterfly in a Conflict Zone

Overheard at National Geographic

National Geographic

Science, Society & Culture

4.5 • 10.1K Ratings

🗓️ 20 September 2022

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Photographer Rena Effendi’s father, a Soviet entomologist, collected 90,000 butterflies in his lifetime. But there was one species he couldn’t capture—Satyrus effendi. Effendi takes on the quest to track down the endangered butterfly named after her father, but to do so, she must navigate its home territory, a conflict zone in Azerbaijan. For more information on this episode, visit natgeo.com/overheard. Want more? To see Rena Effendi’s photography, take a look at her portfolio. Also explore. We only briefly touched on the war between Armenia and Azerbaijan, which you can read more about in Rena Effendi’s article. Through words and photos, she followed the half a million Azerbaijanis who lost their homes in the conflict. Plus, learn more about how the COVID-19 pandemic had a big effect on Armenians and Azerbaijanis already struggling with the conflict. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Do you remember when you first heard about this butterfly that was named after your dad?
0:05.0	It was just sort of an accidental discovery.
0:09.0	Again, my father never told me.
0:12.0	And he died before the internet was kind of invented.
0:17.0	That's Rena Affendi, a National Geographic photographer from Azerbaijan.
0:22.0	So I was looking up my name and then I was looking up wondering if there's my father's name is out there
0:29.0	and I found a Wikipedia page about my father.
0:32.0	Oh really?
0:33.0	Yeah, somebody created this Wikipedia page.
0:36.0	And I read about him and then I read this kind of footnote.
0:42.0	And it said, you know, a butterfly is named after the scientist.
0:46.0	It's called Satirosa Fendi.
0:48.0	And I clicked on that and the butterfly had its own Wikipedia page.
0:52.0	And I started reading about that and I was in shock.
0:54.0	Oh my god, there's a butterfly that's named after my father and it has my name.
0:58.0	And it's flying.
0:59.0	So I became very curious.
1:01.0	So that was maybe about, I don't know, I would say six or seven years ago.
1:06.0	So it's quite recent.
1:08.0	And then I became kind of obsessed with the idea of finding this butterfly.
1:16.0	I'm Peter Gwyn, Editor at Large at National Geographic.
1:19.0	And you're listening to Overheard, a show where we eavesdrop on the wild conversations we have here at NetGeo
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