Bug-Happy Museum Tries to Lure Even Insect Haters

If tarantulas, cockroaches and other creepy crawlers give you the heebie-jeebies, at least there will be plenty of sweet little butterflies fluttering around this weekend at the Natural History Museum.

The county museum in Exposition Park will be celebrating the bug world today and Sunday at what is billed as the nation’s largest Insect Fair. And in a double-feature event, the facility will also open its summer exhibition, the Pavilion of Wings, which features an outdoor butterfly house for those squeamish about spiders.

“I like to call butterflies

‘spokesinsects,’ ” said Brent Karnes, coordinator of the museum’s Insect Zoo. “People don’t tend to like insects, but they love butterflies.”

The Pavilion of Wings is a screened, sun-lit butterfly house, roughly the size of a basketball court, that allows visitors to interact with more than 20 species of live, free-flying butterflies in a garden setting. Now in its second year, the exhibit--which runs through Sept. 4--is on the museum’s south lawn and has a separate admission fee.

Meanwhile, inside the museum this weekend, true bug aficionados can enjoy the displays of more than 40 exhibitors at the 14th annual Insect Fair. The event will show off living and preserved insects as well as insect art, books and other bug-related toys and clothes. For good measure, the museum cafe will serve up cricket croquettes and chocolate-covered ant cookies.

Ooh, gross, you say? Not so fast, says Kelli Walker, Insect Zoo supervisor. “All insects are full of protein,” she said. The fear and repulsion many people feel toward the creatures are misplaced; more than 80% of the world’s population eat insects as part of their regular diet, according to Karnes.

The fear of bugs is a North American and Western European phenomenon, he added. “In most other areas of the world, you don’t see that in society,” Karnes said. “I’ve been to areas of the tropics where a screamingly large insect or spider will run across the floor, and nobody twitches.”

Karnes said the Western aversion to bugs and critters can be traced in part to historical events such as the Black Plague, which was transmitted with the help of fleas ferried by rats. Those fears have been passed down through generations and, more recently, exacerbated by movies such “Arachnophobia.”

But Karnes thinks our insect phobia is a learned behavior that first asserts itself sometime after age 2. “Two-year-olds want to touch everything. They’d grab a wasp if you let them,” he said. “You know that somewhere in their life they’re getting this fear, yet at the same time they’re not sure if they believe it yet. And when they see somebody like me handling everything, they still want to give it a try.”