The Dangerous World of Butterflies: The Startling Subculture of Criminals, Collectors, and Conservationists is a 2009 book by Doctor of Philosophy Peter Laufer.

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.

In addition, he discovers controversy in commercial butterfly breeding and discovers vast criminal operations involving the mass poaching and smuggling of butterflies.

[1] The Seattle Times compared The Dangerous World of Butterflies to The Orchid Thief, praising both and calling them "entertaining" and "enlightening".

[2] Publishers Weekly said that The Dangerous World of Butterflies delivered an "absorbing science lesson" in what the reviewer called "casual prose".