Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
The amazing life cycle of the Large Blue Butterfly

The amazing life cycle of the Large Blue Butterfly

Harrison, Paul

Paperback

Gifts & Stationery General

ISBN13: 9798187163892
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: Jul 13 2026
Pages: 154
Weight: 0.47
Height: 0.33 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English

In the summer of 1979, the last Large Blue butterfly vanished from a British hillside, not because nobody cared, but because nobody yet understood. This is the story of one of the most astonishing creatures in the natural world, and of the scientific detective work that brought it back from the dead.

The Large Blue's life cycle reads like something from a thriller. A caterpillar that tricks red ants into carrying it underground, feeding on ant grubs in a secret subterranean world, surviving a winter hidden beneath English soil before emerging to fly again. Every stage of that journey depends on a chain of biological coincidences so precisely calibrated that missing any single link means death, and extinction.

This book takes you inside that extraordinary story. You will discover how a young entomologist named Jeremy Thomas refused to accept the easy answer, and how years of painstaking fieldwork on chalk grasslands eventually revealed a web of dependencies that rewrote British conservation science. You will understand why the butterfly kept disappearing despite careful protection, and what it took - measuring grass height in centimetres, mapping ant nests, following a caterpillar underground - to finally understand what this creature truly needed.

And you will witness the rare and moving outcome: a species actually brought back, flying again on English hillsides, because science did the hard work of asking the right questions.

Written with warmth, clarity, and deep respect for the scientists involved, this is natural history at its most gripping - a story about a butterfly that changed the way we think about saving the natural world.

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