Apart from the period in childhood when we would comb bushes looking to capture specimens to hold for a few moments or, if one felt particularly enterprising, keep in jars till the inevitable demise, I haven't given particular attention to butterflies. So it was not an undying curiosity to know more about the life-form that I picked up Sharman Russell's book, but rather the back-of-the-book blurb which promised to explore the basis of the fascination of ardent butterfly collectors for their favorite insect and how it drove their actions, often regarded as mad by the non-obsessed.

Russell writes not as a scientific researcher burdening the public with baffling technical jargon, but as a friendly acquaintance discussing a topic of minutiae that happens to interest her. Divided into fifteen quasi-standalone chapters, her discussions of the butterfly life-cycle are nicely peppered with POV observations that try to explain the behavior patterns in lightly digested prose, interspersed with pop culture references (some of which, like the comparison of a pupal molting to Tom Cruise's acrobatics in Mission: Impossible, can fall quite flat) and frequent diversions into the people that have given their lives to the collation and study of these creatures.

The “people” part is interesting in itself. Russell chronicles the 1848 journey of Henry Bates and Alfred Wallace into the Amazon forest, which resulted in work that went a long way in validating Darwin's theories on evolution. Writer Vladimir Nabokov (Lolita) is another interesting entry, revealed here to be a champion lepidopterist; Russell recreates a lecture in which Nabokov moves a discussion of R.L. Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Kafka's Metamorphosis to an absorbing commentary of the morphing process of a caterpillar to a butterfly. Contemporary workers are interviewed as well. While the juxtaposition between the scientific lecture and "human" elements is not quite as seamless as Russell may have aimed for, it works well for what it is.

The most rewarding element of this book however, is the large servings of observation of butterfly behavior: an incredibly variety of manners between species and sometimes even between individuals. Experiments that show butterflies to have adaptive behavior with the ability to re-learn Pavlovian associations: Pretty amazing for a pin-head, I should think. Some species operate solo while others at various stages of their life-cycle form complex symbiotic relationships with species like ants, offering honeyed secretions in exchange for protection or food. Their mating behavior also shows a large amount of variation, courtships lasting from a few minutes to hours and weeks with very different modes of approach, depending as much on environmental conditions as on species make-up: a high male to female ration may lead to situations where adult males stalk female pupae waiting for them to emerge with the express purpose of instantly skewering them. Creepy indeed.

In all, An Obsession with Butterflies offers a very fascinating insight into the world of this flighty insect. As popular science-writing goes, it may not quite have the sweep and majesty of the Richard Dawkins scythe, but is an engaging prospect in itself and well-worth the time you give it.