madame butterfly

Few members of the animal kingdom evoke our sense of childlike wonder quite like the butterfly. There’s something almost absurdly fanciful about them—the riotous colours, the bobbing flying motion, the whole metamorphosis thing. Butterflies seem to exist outside the normal order of nature, strange and magical animals floating above the base desires and violence of regular Darwinian life. They’ve been the stuff of myths and the muse for many a poet—as well as the inspiration for many an ill-advised tattoo. But who are these creatures and why are we so fascinated by them?

From an etymological standpoint, butterflies, along with moths, belong to the order Lepidoptera, hence the delightful name for those who study and collect butterflies: lepidopterists. While there are more than 18,000 distinct species of butterfly in the world, all butterflies are defined by having four scale-covered wings; the name Lepidoptera derives from the Ancient Greek for ‘scale’ () and ‘wing’ (). It’s