The Dangerous World of Butterflies

I read Peter Laufer’s book The Dangerous World of Butterflies after seeing the author interviewed on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart.

Perhaps because he wrote the book as a break from his books on warfare, prisons, and other light topics, Laufer uncovers a surprising amount of conflict, criminal behavior, and creepiness—including a painting by Damien Hirst (of dead shark fame) incorporating the bodies of butterflies who emerge from their chrysalises only to be trapped in the artist’s fresh paint.

Laufer presents other intriguing (and less creepy) facts.

For instance, it is apparently a myth that one cannot hold a butterfly by its wings without permanently damaging its ability to fly.

The color in the wings of some butterflies, including the showy Blue Morpho, comes entirely from reflection and refraction: the actual color of a Blue Morpho, visible when it gets wet, is brown.

And the transformation from caterpillar to butterfly, as remarkable as it is, is even more remarkable when you learn that the creature doesn’t just change shape in its chrysalis—it actually turns to liquid. Laufer talks to Rachel Diaz-Bastin, a biologist at the butterfly house in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park:

Inside the hard chrysalis the transformation is in progress. “All of their body parts, every cell, liquefies.” It is, as she has said before, science fiction. “This is weird stuff. All of their cells differentiate and begin forming the adult butterfly. It’s basically this big butterfly soup inside.”

Were you cut the chrysalis at this stage, you would find nothing resembling a caterpillar and nothing resembling a butterfly: only liquid.