Face-to-Face With Creepy-Crawlies

Zach Lemann believes that the best way to understand and appreciate bugs is to--well, eat them.

The New Orleans entomophagist (one who eats bugs) has been cooking up a variety of recipes using house crickets, wax worms and mealworms for years as a way to “raise bug consciousness.” He’s particularly proud of his Crispy Cajun Crickets, Poached Wax Worms on Crackers With Honey and, his personal favorite, Chocolate Chirp Cookies.

“There are people who study how and why different cultures eat bugs, which is very interesting,” he says, “but for me, I use insect cooking as a hook to talk about bugs in general with people, to educate them about the many reasons why bugs are vital and important to us.”

Lemann and his bug demonstrations is just one of the many events featured at this year’s 13th annual Insect Fair, Saturday and Sunday, sponsored by the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County.

As a celebration of all things bugs, the Insect Fair is the largest annual event of its kind in the nation, a one-of-a-kind opportunity to come face to face with the tiny crawling, slithering, leggy critters that outnumber man by countless zillions. Got an insect-phobia? Here’s the place to cure it once and for all.

Held inside the museum, the Insect Fair will offer more than 60 exhibitors from around the world showing off both living and preserved insects as well as beetle jewelry, insect art and other bug-related books, crafts and toys.

In addition to Lemann’s culinary bug preparations, visitors will be able to sample chocolate-covered crickets and cricket lollipops in the museum’s cafe. Also joining the entertainment lineup will be Jonathan Acorn, star of the Animal Planet cable TV show “The Nature Nut,” who will perform some of his insect tunes and tell bug stories.

But probably the most alluring of all exhibits will be those where children (and brave adults) will be able to touch live insects and their relatives, such as the Madagascar hissing cockroach, the giant walking stick and the African millipede.

Fair visitors also will be encouraged to take a walk through the Insect Zoo, the museum’s permanent insect exhibit displaying more than 40 live insects and their relatives from around the world. It’s one of the largest collections in the United States. Fossilized insects, some dating back to 210 million years ago, are also available for viewing.

“There is so much fascination with insects, and not just from a scientific and cultural standpoint,” says Art Evans, director of the Insect Zoo and chairman of the Insect Fair. “I think it’s because they are so completely alien to ourselves and the animals we know so much about. Insects live in this little world under our feet, and they don’t take orders from us. We don’t seem to matter to them in the least.”

Evans contends that human beings owe plenty of gratitude to bugs. “The most important ones are the pollinators; they really keep everything in balance,” he says. “Bugs are also one of the best natural recyclers and fertilizers we have, as well as good indicators when there is a change in the environment. Only about 1% of all insects are the ‘bad’ bugs, the ones we contract diseases from or fight against for our food.”

In addition to participating in the festivities within the museum, visitors to the Insect Fair also will have the opportunity to get a peek at an upcoming, temporary exhibit located outside the museum. Scheduled to officially open on May 29 and stay open through Sept. 6, the Pavilion of Wings butterfly house will feature more than 20 species of butterflies in a landscaped, naturally lit environment.

Evans says that, at any given time, between 200 and 300 butterflies--such as the monarch, American painted lady, zebra long wing and swallowtail--will be fluttering around the greenhouse-like pavilion. “We will be receiving about 200 pupa weekly from butterfly growers, which we will later release in the pavilion as they emerge,” he says.

From spiders to centipedes, honeybees to grasshoppers, bugs--like dinosaurs--have captured kids’ fascination throughout the years. Both Lemann and Evans admit that as young boys they would routinely take empty jars into their backyards to capture, collect and create their own bug zoos. “Some things in life you should never outgrow,” sums up Lemann.

BE THERE

The 13th Annual Insect Fair at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County will be held Saturday and Sunday from 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Participation in the fair is included with admission to the museum; $6 for adults, $3.50 for students and seniors, $2 for children 5-12. Children under 5 are free. Separate admission is required for entrance to the butterfly Pavilion of Wings exhibit; $3 for adults, $2 for students and seniors, $1 for children 5-12. The museum is in Exposition Park, 9000 Exposition Blvd., Los Angeles. For general museum information, call (323) 763-DINO or visit the museum’s Web site at https://www.nhm.org.

A View of a Tiny World

Arthropods (bugs) are divided into five categories: insects, arachnids, crustaceans, millipedes and centipedes.

* The longest bug is the giant walking stick, measuring 14 inches across.

* The heaviest bug is the rhinoceros Hercules beetle, weighing 1.2 ounces.

* The bug with the greatest wingspan (12 inches) is the atlas moth.

* The smallest bug is the mymarid wasp. It’s so small it can crawl through the eye of a needle.

* There are 1.5 million species of bugs. The total number of individual bugs on Earth is 10 quintillion--10,000,000,000,000,000,000.

* Some bug fossils have been found to be 409 million years old.

Source: The Insect Zoo at the Natural History Museum