Te Papa Tongarewa Insect Exhibit

Back in April, J and I went to the Insect Exhibit at Te Papa Tongarewa. I have posted about this museum several times before, as it is the single most amazing museum I've ever been to in my life. This exhibit was no exception. It took you into the world of arthropods (insects and spiders) in a very intense way, because they made them person-sized, so it was like you were in their world.

I have to apologize in advance for the quality of many of the pictures. It was quite dusky in the exhibit, which was great for ambiance, but not impressive for photography.

The exhibit was organized into different pods, each of which celebrated a different insect. This grassy one was about dragonflies in a pond, and you felt like you were tiny and walking amongst tall marsh grasses as you went in.

The dragonfly exhibit had this sign by the entrance, which made me laugh. The strobe light effect inside to demonstrate the amazing speed of dragonfly flight was impressive, but not photographable.

This praying mantis was about 10 feet tall, and you can see why it's a threatening predator! I would run away! It is impressively camouflaged among the orchids, and hard to see unless revealed by this UV light.

In one of the many child-friendly interactive activities, there was a large picture of orchids, and the challenge was to find the praying mantises. It was very difficult to do so...

... until you used the UV flashlights they provided, and then they would seem to jump out at you! I was somewhat confused by the use of UV light, as I couldn't see the connection between UV and praying mantises, but J says it was just an effect to help you see how they can be right in front of you without you seeing them. It was very effective.

This jewel wasp is hard to see, because it blends into the background of this pod, which is inspired by its iridescent colours. But if you look carefully, you can see that it is injecting the cockroach with magic zombie-poison under its chin. Apparently, the jewel wasp turns a cockroach into a zombie, then lays her eggs in it, and it sits peacefully under her control (even though she's long gone) as the egg hatches and the baby jewel wasp eats it alive. Revolting, I know, but also pretty impressive. (Also, it made the "human host" comment on the sign I liked a bit morbid.)

One pod was dedicated to an amazing defense mechanism that Japanese bees have against hornets. According to the sign, "Japanese honeybees "cook" their hornet enemy by engulfing it and rapidly vibrating their wing muscles. They can stand temperatures a few degrees higher than the hornet can." In this exhibit, with bees the size of people and an even bigger hornet, children (and adults) had to warm up glass honeycomb panels by rubbing them until the hive got hot enough to kill the hornet, at which point the lights flashed dramatically and we won. The children loved this, making this one of the most consistently crowded pods.

This enormous spider and web suspended from the ceiling were pretty awesome.

There were also lots of actual insects to admire. This one, whose leafiness seems almost excessive, was my favourite.

This one made me laugh, because surely all that body mass could not be lifted by those little wings! It made me think of Heimlich the caterpillar in A Bug's Life, who turns into a butterfly at the end, but just has these preposterously little wings. 

Can you see the similarity?

Anyway, the exhibit was amazing, and I'm so glad we went. Many of my children from Whare Kea also went over the several months it was there, and they all loved it. I had heard a lot about it from them before I went, but none of them said that it was scary. It was good that I had that in mind when I went through, because otherwise I might have worried that some of the insects would frighten them. But they are often braver than I think they'll be.

I'm so glad that there are exhibits like this to encourage people to see how amazing arthropods are, instead of being afraid of them. Their abilities are much like superpowers, and I just love knowing that incredible things like this are going on in the world every day, all around us. It's quite uplifting, somehow.