The Dangerous World of Butterflies
book by Peter Laufer
The Dangerous World of Butterflies: The Startling Subculture of Criminals, Collectors, and Conservationists is a 2009 book by Doctor of Philosophy Peter Laufer. It is the first book in his untitled animal trilogy, preceding Forbidden Creatures in 2010 and No Animals Were Harmed in 2011. The book explores the presence of the butterfly in the fields of organized crime, ecological devastation, species depletion, natural history museum integrity, and chaos theory.
Overview
The Dangerous World of Butterflies has Laufer talking to butterfly experts, both professional and amateur, discussing the art, conservation, breeding, development, wing colors, and the meaning of its fascination for humans of the butterfly. He explores the various mysteries of lepidopterology, such as the process of metamorphosis. In addition, he discovers controversy in commercial butterfly breeding and discovers vast criminal operations involving the mass poaching and smuggling of butterflies.
Critical reception
Kirkus Reviews had a mixed review of the book, saying that it was "charming but slightly scattershot" and "flawed but pleasing".
The Seattle Times compared The Dangerous World of Butterflies to The Orchid Thief, praising both and calling them "entertaining" and "enlightening".
Publishers Weekly said that The Dangerous World of Butterflies delivered an "absorbing science lesson" in what the reviewer called "casual prose".
“The Dangerous World of Butterflies” enters the record as book by Peter Laufer. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Dangerous, World and Butterflies can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“The Dangerous World of Butterflies” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Dangerous, World and Butterflies provides the most credible route into that argument.
Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 25, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7728862. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2009, 2010 and 2011.
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This entry incorporates text from “The Dangerous World of Butterflies” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.