Species from Africa, Australia, Central America and Madagascar will be displayed in terrariums evoking their natural habitats. Take a bug's-eye look at a black widow spider spinning her silk web, African giant black millipedes curling in self-defense and the iridescent glow of the scorpion without the worry of getting nipped on the nose!
To see these animals in nature you'd have to travel the whole world," Susan Borkin, Museum curator of insects, said. "We're trying to broaden the visitor's concept of what arthropods are, what they look like, and where you can find them."

Bugs Alive! will highlight the bullet ant, a tropical ant species with one of the most venomous stings of any insect. Watch worker ants forage for food, take out the trash and even groom one another; and peer into the nesting chamber to spy on the queen laying eggs, and the immature grubs and pupae that will slowly grow into adult ants.

Other species include:

• Madagascar hissing cockroaches, which make a distinctive hissing sound when they're threatened by forcing air through holes along the sides of their bodies.
• Walkingsticks, nature's masters of camouflage. They not only look like twigs and leaves, but they 'act' like them, too, hanging motionless or moving slowly as if swaying in the breeze so as not to attract predators.
• A vinegaroon, an arachnid that sprays a pungent, vinegar-like mist to defend itself.
• Jade-headed buffalo beetles, white-eyed assassin bugs and a 100-legger a giant desert centipede from the American southwest.

"Visitors can observe the intricacies of insect behaviors and learn how this group of animals became the most dominant on the planet" Borkin said.

Information panels will discuss where these animals fit in the natural world, how there are no good or bad bugs, and how arthropods are critical to the functioning of life on our planet.

"Quite simply, we couldn't survive without arthropods," Borkin said. "They help decompose organic matter, aid in the production of fruits and seeds, and regulate the balance of gasses in the air we breathe."

Hands-on activities are offered between 10 am - 2 pm (Mon - Sat), and noon - 2 pm (Sun) only when volunteers are available.

Bugs Alive! Insects and Their Relatives is supported through a generous gift from the Walter Schroeder Foundation.

Bugs Alive! is free with Museum admission.