THE prime examples of the species are best viewed in their natural habitat.

They shout with the urgency of a monkey sounding an alarm call, they gesture with their limbs with the blurred intensity of an octopus falling out of a tree, they pace in disappointment with the studied, air of a polar bear who has been told that seal is off the menu.

The football obsessive on the sideline is a majestic beast. Kenny Shiels, manager of Kilmarnock, is king of that jungle. ''I have never met anyone who is as mad about football as I am. When you reflect on yourself, I always think about what I have been doing in football. Have I said too much? Have I done too much? Every day it is 14 to 16 hours. I leave the house at half past five every morning,'' says Shiels.

He is talking in his pen after spending the previous two hours caged behind high wire fences on an artificial pitch at the West of Scotland Science Park in Glasgow. Shiels roamed the perimeter of the pitch with his trademark focus but with a distinct show of encouragement to a young Kilmarnock side that was battling St Johnstone in a bounce match. The Scottish Communities League Cup semi-final against Ayr United on Saturday seemed to be forgotten.

Shiels was in his element, bareheaded as a wicked wind drove across the pitch. There is a mantra of cries. ''Well done, Rory'', ''That's so positive'', ''Keep it going, lads'', ''Good work, good work''. These are his players. They are also his boys.

There may be bigger football obsessives in the world but Shiels will do until they reincarnate Bill Shankly. His love of the game is underpinned by both nature and nurture. It is a family business. ''I get my coaching skills from my mother and my passion from my father,'' says the man from Maghera, County Londonderry, sipping a cup of tea.

His story has been oft-told but still retains a power to amuse and sadden. There were nine children, eight boys and a girl. One brother, Dave, was shot dead by the IRA in 1990, almost certainly the victim of mistaken identity.

Shiels has a psychology degree but even an amateur exponent of people-watching or, more pertinently, people-listening can appreciate that he seeks to concentrate on the positive elements of his family.

His mother, Elizabeth, who will be 87 in March is the saint and the creator of character. ''I got my coaching skills from my mother. She is my role model, the best coach I ever worked with. She brought up eight boys and a girl and I have become better at dealing with people because of the way she brought us up.

''There was 11 of us in the house. When you woke up in the morning there was a pair of feet there, then you turned your head and there was a pair of feet there. She was running from pillar to post, boys playing football, smashing windows. Her passion was that team, if you want to call a family a team.''

Shiels, of course, has no hesitation in calling a family a team or a team a family. There is an insight in to his driving forces when he adds: ''When I got a bit more sensible, when I got older, I reflected on my mother and asked myself why she did it. The answer is that her passion was to bring up children. She had a strategy, a gameplan.''

Shiels mentions that his mother worked 16 hours a day. The son also rises early and works late. ''I am used to it. Football has always been part of my life. Look at a picture of me as a kid. I always have my football boots on.''

Now 55, he talks animatedly of games played long ago against the family ''across the fields''. ''They were 11 of them, too,'' he said. ''Not all of them boys but we played some great games. People laugh when I saw we played for 14 hours in the holidays.''

This passion came from his father, the eponymous manager of Roy's Chicks. ''He was a chicken farmer and he sacrificed his business at times for football,'' said Shiels.

There is a suspicion that if mother was the saint, then dad was a bit of a rascal. ''I was called No.4 son. We went round the area with the team all crowded into a Morris Oxford. He would stop the car and say: 'No.4 son, go and get the children some fish and chips'. He would nick in for a swift drink. It would all be frowned upon now and, of course, it is wrong but it was the way then.''

Roy also had a serious purpose, though. ''He drew the two communities together. The town was split between Catholics and Protestants but not in his football team,'' said his son.

Roy's grandson, of course, is also a professional footballer. Dean, who is suffering from a virus, is a key player for Kilmarnock and his father is desperate for him to play in the semi-final this weekend. He is also quietly but obviously proud of his son. Six years ago, the 26-year-old forward had an eye removed. It had been injured in a childhood accident but increasingly had caused the player both pain and blurred vision.

Dean, who started his professional career at Arsenal, is thus a professional playing with a substantial disability. ''The amount of hours I worked with Dean . . .'' says Shiels. ''I wanted him to do well in football. Not just because he was my son, but because of the other thing. That drove me to drive him.''

The ''other thing'' is not alluded to in any more precise terms but Shiels accepts that his son's triumph over his disability is almost inexplicable. ''It is remarkable for the type of footballer he is. It is not as if he is just a hard-working player, just a grafter. He is but he is more than that. He is intelligent. His peripheral vision, his awareness of movement and where to play the ball is outstanding,'' he said, aware of the reference to vision.

His technical abilities, of course, should come as no surprise given the ancestry of Roy's Chicks and dad's 14 years as a player in the Irish League. ''Hopefully some of it is inbred and some of it is about being around the game. He came into all the team talks when I was managing Carrick Rangers when he was six. When he was 10 he was such a good striker of the ball that I used him to warm up the goalkeepers in training at Coleraine.''

The grandweans may find football somewhat difficult to avoid. His daughters married footballers. Oran Kearney, the Coleraine manager, is married to Lauren and Shea Campbell, the former Linfield player, wed Grace. They have two boys and a girl between them.

And what of Gwen, the long-suffering wife, mother and grandmother of the Shiels family? ''I knew I loved her when I saw her play football,'' chuckles Shiels. And where else would the football obsessive find a wife?