Feeling Bugged? : Recreation: The Natural History Museum’s Insect Zoo lets visitors get up close and personal with bugs. One draw: the largest cockroach ever found in L.A.

A small crowd hovered around the three-inch, two-horned insect crawling up the back of Art Evans’ hand.

“Yuck,” said a man at the edge of the group.

Three-year-old Nathan Gloyd of El Toro reached out his tiny hand. Evans, the entomologist who directs the Insect Zoo at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles, passed the Madagascan hissing cockroach to the little boy.

“Handle him carefully,” said Evans. “If he falls, he’ll get hurt.” The giant roach began to make its way up Nathan’s arm. “It’s not much fun when it runs up your arm, is it?” Evans asked.

“Oh, yes it is,” said the preschooler.

Actually, the name “Insect Zoo” is something of a misnomer because all the creatures therein--including the insects--belong to the arthropod family. (Arthropods have jointed appendages and exoskeletons; they include crabs, lobsters, spiders, mites, millipedes and centipedes.) “But if we called it the Arthropod Zoo, who’d come?” said Evans with a shrug.

But why should humans come out to look at insects by any name? “Because they’re the linchpin of the Earth,” said Evans. “Without them, life as we know it wouldn’t exist. They’ve been here since before the dinosaurs, and they’ll be here long after we’re gone.”

On a recent Sunday afternoon, Evans and a museum volunteer went from tank to tank talking about the insects and other creepy-crawlies with clusters of visitors. “This is a Mexican red-kneed tarantula,” said Evans as he passed around a red-tinged furry spider named Maggie. “We think she is 16 or 18 years old. Males only live four to six years.”

Evans shined an ultraviolet light on a clutch of scorpions and showed his visitors how they turn from black to green. “Their bodies don’t absorb the UV rays,” Evans explained. “We absorb those rays, which is how we get tans and sunburns, but they bounce them right off.

“If you go out in the desert with one of these lights on a good night, you’ll see the scorpions just glowing in the sand. I’ve seen as many as 20 scorpions just sitting around waiting for something to walk by that they can eat. “

All scorpions are poisonous, but the ones here are not considered deadly, said Evans, who added that no visitors have been bitten or stung at the Insect Zoo.

There are many multilegged attractions here, including the largest cockroach ever found in Los Angeles and a millipede with three-inch legs. And no, millipedes don’t actually have a million legs. As a few children took turns letting a millipede crawl over their hands, Evans said: “I never counted them, but I’m guessing they have 150 to 200 pairs of legs. “

Next up: a Hercules beetle. It looks wet, but that’s just a waxy coating to seal in body moisture. Children petted it, then giggled when the beetle wouldn’t let go of Evans’ hand.

Evans, whose interest in bugs began in kindergarten, collected the majority of the insects on display here. Last summer, he spent five days in the deserts of southeastern Arizona looking for scorpions, millipedes, tarantulas and wasps.

“This was one of the poorest collecting years we’ve ever had, but I have other sources,” Evans said. “There’s a company in Arizona that sells insects and other invertebrates to insect zoos--it’s like going to a grocery store.”

This Insect Zoo is the only one in Southern California. The San Francisco Zoo has one, and dozens of similar exhibits are springing up elsewhere around the country as interest increases, Evans said.

Here, a shortage of space and staff has forced the Insect Zoo to concentrate on insects that are long-lived and require low maintenance, Evans said. (The collection includes a few insects the zoo has been able to breed.) Even so, said Evans, it takes three or four hours each day to feed and water all the specimens.

“The ones we handle are large enough to get hold of,” said Evans. “If they fly or jump or sting or bite, generally we don’t handle them. It’s not that we control them, rather we choose (insects) whose behavior can be used to our advantage. They get used to being handled, so they don’t feel as threatened by it.”

But Evans admits even he is uncomfortable around one group of his charges: the spiders. “I can turn over a log and there’ll be a zillion bugs under it, which is great. All of a sudden I see a creature with an extra pair of legs on it and the hair on the back of my neck stands up. . . . And I’ve heard that’s not uncommon with entomologists.”

Many of the children who visit the Insect Zoo show absolutely no fear at all, while others are obviously afraid. “But sometimes you can see where they get it from,” Evans claimed. “Their parents are over there lurking in the shadows.”

Before moving last month to the museum’s second floor between the Marine Hall and the Chaparral, parts of the Insect Zoo could be found scattered throughout the museum. A permanent educational exhibit containing 17 components, each highlighting a different aspect of entomology, is expected to debut in about a year.

Insects are cheap to care for--a dog biscuit is all that’s needed to feed some species--and easy to watch, said Evans, who points out that there are all kinds of things you can do with insects besides squishing them.

“As a hobby, it’s fantastic,” he said. “I realize the kids aren’t all going to grow up to be entomologists, but if they have a positive experience here, it’ll make them think twice about stepping on something.”

The Insect Zoo is at 900 Exposition Park in the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. Admission is included in the price of museum admission, which is $3 for adults, $1.50 for students ages 12 to 17 and senior citizens, and 75 for children ages 5 to 12. Museum members and children under 5 are admitted free. Viewing hours are Tuesday through Sunday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. On Saturdays and Sundays, members of the zoo staff are on hand to supervise insect handling. For information, call (213) 744-3558.