Visitors of the Houston Zoo on Memorial Day got a thrill of the "creepy-crawly" kind as the facility held a display of 25 odd and unique insects in its Bug House.
The zoo was celebrating the opening of the insectarium, the first in its 92-year existence, by featuring a number of venomous and exotic species, housed in custom habitats in the $3 million project.
Everything from 6-inch-long katydids to giant cave cockroaches from South American and Panama greeted visitors eyeing them in their aquarium-like exhibition habitats.
"They're fascinating and they're just hard to see out in the wild," said Kevin Hodge, curator of the Children's Zoo inside the 55-acre Houston Park. "Most of these insects around here no one's ever going to see on a trip to Africa or Malaysia. A lot of times they're at the very tops of trees and could be among thousands of animals living on one huge canopy tree."
Also on display were 2-inch flying cockroaches common around Houston, plus more far-flung species like forest scorpions from Malaysia and South African insects dubbed white-eyed assassin bugs.
There were even blue death-feigning beetles, which have evolved a trick of falling over onto their backs and pretending to be dead when encountering predators looking for live victims.
The zoo has spent two years of planning and 8 months of construction to create its 2,000-saure foot insectarium.
The Bug House needed multiple permits and inspections from the U.S. Department of Agriculture before it could put both the native and exotic species on display.
While not exactly cuddly-looking to most people, insects are valuable to the world for many reasons, including helping in food production as pollinators, as well as being recyclers of organic matter.
"They're not just creepy crawly things we want to get rid of," Hodge said. "Insects are a good indicator of how the planet is doing as a whole."
"We're taking something that people rarely see and are bringing them into a place where they can appreciate nature," he said.
Considered one of the Unites States' leading zoos, Houston's facility is also one of the most visited, with 2.2 million visitors in 2013.
