The "Where Have They Gone?" Mystery
When was the last time you saw a tutubi?
Not on a documentary. Not in a children's book. Not in a Facebook memory from fifteen years ago.
An actual tutubi.
A dragonfly hovering over an empty lot. Skimming above a rice field. Dancing over a canal after a sudden afternoon rain.
Take a moment and search your memory.
For many Filipinos, especially those who grew up in the 1990s and early 2000s, dragonflies were everywhere. They were as ordinary as tricycles, sari-sari stores, and the sound of a basketball bouncing on cracked pavement. They appeared after rainstorms. They floated over grassy fields. They landed on clotheslines and electric wires like tiny helicopters surveying the neighborhood.
Today, something feels different.
The sky is still there.
The mosquitoes certainly are.
But the tutubi seem to have quietly left.
No public announcement. No farewell tour. No viral campaign.
Just gone.
In their place are condominiums, parking structures, expressways, cellphone towers, and a haze of exhaust that hangs over the city like a permanent filter.
And that raises an uncomfortable question:
What exactly happened?
The Controversial Theory: Did 90s Kids Cause the Extinction?
Before we get serious, we need to address the accusation.
Because if social media has taught us anything, it is that every environmental mystery eventually turns into a criminal investigation.
And according to one increasingly popular conspiracy theory, the primary suspects are...
The 90s kids.
The evidence is admittedly compelling.
We all know the modus operandi.
The target would be spotted hovering low over a vacant lot.
The hunter would slowly approach.
Careful.
Patient.
Silent.
Then—SNAP.
A quick finger-pinch on the wings.
Mission accomplished.
Some were tied with sewing thread and flown around like miniature kites. Others were imprisoned inside empty peanut butter jars. The more entrepreneurial among us experimented with tingting broomstick ribs, transforming ordinary household cleaning tools into anti-aircraft technology.
And who could forget the endless neighborhood myths?
Catch a tutubi and make a wish.
A dragonfly landing on your head means good luck.
If a dragonfly bites your pusod, you'll suddenly learn how to swim.
Nobody questioned the science.
We simply accepted it.
Looking back, the entire generation behaved like a wildlife documentary narrated by chaos.
Which leads to the joke now making the rounds online:
Maybe we harvested the tutubi population into ecological collapse.
Some readers are probably laughing.
Others are nervously calculating how many dragonflies they personally captured.
"Oops."
"My bad."
"We only caught three."
"We were children!"
Fair enough.
But we can stop blaming the children now.
Because the real monster is much bigger, made of concrete, and smells suspiciously like the Pasig River.
The Scientific Truth: Dragonflies Are Living Environmental Reports
The uncomfortable reality is that dragonflies did not disappear because they were traumatized by Filipino childhoods.
They disappeared because they are biological sentinels.
Dragonflies function like living environmental report cards.
Long before they become the elegant flying creatures we recognize, dragonflies spend months—or even years—as aquatic nymphs living underwater.
And these underwater stages are extremely demanding.
They require clean freshwater.
They require oxygen-rich environments.
They require functioning ecosystems.
When water becomes polluted, contaminated, stagnant, or ecologically degraded, dragonfly populations collapse.
Which means the absence of dragonflies is not random.
It is diagnostic.
A flashing red warning light.
A biological alarm system.
When dragonflies disappear, nature is essentially telling us something is wrong.
And in Metro Manila, something has been wrong for a very long time.
Many rivers, esteros, creeks, and urban waterways have become so polluted that they can no longer support the complex web of life that dragonflies depend on.
The tutubi didn't abandon the city.
The city became unlivable for them.
The Concrete Jungle We Mistook for Progress
There is another reason dragonflies have vanished.
Even if the water were perfectly clean, many of the habitats they once occupied simply no longer exist.
The Philippines has spent decades transforming open spaces into commercial opportunities.
Vacant lots became malls.
Wetlands became subdivisions.
Grass fields became parking areas.
Ponds became construction sites.
Nature became real estate.
From an economic perspective, these projects often look like progress.
From an ecological perspective, they resemble systematic habitat erasure.
Dragonflies thrive in transitional spaces—the edges between water and land, between field and forest, between wetland and grassland.
Modern urban development specializes in removing exactly those spaces.
Every patch of concrete replaces a miniature ecosystem.
Every disappearing green space removes another refuge for wildlife.
And then there is the heat.
Metro Manila's urban heat island effect is no longer a future concern.
It is a lived experience.
We feel it every afternoon while waiting for transportation.
We feel it walking through commercial districts with almost no trees.
We feel it when entire neighborhoods seem to radiate heat long after sunset.
A city stripped of greenery becomes hotter, harsher, and less hospitable—not just for dragonflies, but for everyone.
Nature's Attack Helicopters
What makes this loss particularly tragic is that dragonflies are not passive ornaments.
They are predators.
Elite predators.
Nature's Attack Helicopters.
Four-winged attack drones designed by evolution.
Dragonflies spend their lives hunting.
Mosquitoes.
Gnats.
Flies.
Countless insects that humans generally prefer not to share space with.
A single dragonfly can consume remarkable numbers of mosquitoes every day.
Imagine that.
For thousands of years, nature developed a highly efficient airborne mosquito-control system.
It was beautiful.
Silent.
Self-replicating.
And completely free.
Then we destroyed much of the habitat supporting it.
Today, cities spend enormous sums on chemical fogging programs and emergency vector-control campaigns.
Yet dengue remains a recurring threat.
Zika periodically returns to public attention.
Mosquito populations continue to thrive.
We replaced ecological balance with reactive management.
The result is predictable.
When nature's predators disappear, the pests remain.
The Dystopian Future of a Silent Sky
Imagine a child growing up in Metro Manila fifty years from now.
They know dragonflies only through YouTube videos.
They have never seen one hovering above a canal.
Never chased one across a grassy field.
Never heard their grandparents talk about catching tutubi during rainy afternoons.
Nature becomes something viewed through screens rather than experienced firsthand.
Biodiversity becomes an abstract concept.
The city becomes quieter in all the wrong ways.
Not because it is peaceful.
Because fewer living things remain.
The survivors are the species most adapted to human neglect.
Rats.
Cockroaches.
Disease-carrying mosquitoes.
The organisms that thrive when ecosystems fail.
That is not science fiction.
It is the logical endpoint of environmental indifference.
The Real Question Isn't About Dragonflies
At first glance, this story seems to be about tutubi.
But it isn't.
Not really.
It is about the type of city we are building.
Because a city capable of supporting dragonflies is also a city capable of supporting cleaner water, cooler neighborhoods, healthier communities, and a stronger relationship between people and nature.
The disappearance of the tutubi is not the disease.
It is the symptom.
A city hostile to dragonflies eventually becomes hostile to human well-being too.
And perhaps that is the most unsettling part of all.
One day, we looked up and noticed the tutubi were gone.
The bigger question is this:
How many other warning signs have disappeared with them before we finally decide to pay attention?
Join the Conversation
Do you remember catching tutubi as a child? Do you still see them where you live today?
Share your memories, observations, and thoughts in the comments. Sometimes the smallest creatures reveal the biggest truths about the places we call home.
TAGS: #Tutubi #Dragonflies #MetroManila #Philippines #EnvironmentalAwareness #Urbanization #Biodiversity #Dengue #Sustainability #ClimateAction #LifestyleAndInsights
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