Female tarantulas typically live to be around 25 or 30 years old, while the males typically die around age three. Sometimes, the females kill the males.
This is just one of the interesting facts people could learn at this year’s annual Bug Fest, which took place Saturday at the Hilltop Garden and Nature Center.
Visitors could also learn that when ants drink colored sugar water, their abdomens turn the color of the dye, or that fleas have a kind of gear built into their legs that helps them jump so high.
Hundreds of adults and children wandered through the event, participating in activities, creating artwork and listening to speakers.
“When most people think about bugs, they probably just think, ‘Ew.,” Lea Woodard, the Hilltop Garden coordinator, said. “But most people probably don’t know a lot about all of the really positive impacts insects can have on the ?environment.”
Dr. Peter Scott spoke to attendees about the importance of conserving the bee population, noting that there are over 400 different species of bees in Indiana alone.
Other speakers discussed the incredible 10,000-mile migration of the monarch butterfly, how to identify different types of dragonflies and the role that spiders play in nature.
“There’s a diversity of over 400 species of spiders in our state, but only two are harmful to humans,” Leslie Bishop, a retired professor of biology at Earlham College, said. “When people have a fear of spiders, they don’t realize that most of them are really good to have around.”
Bishop explained that spiders eat insects, help your garden and are vital players in the food web.
Her favorite type of spider is the crab spider, which really does look like a little crab. They don’t build webs but perch on flowers until other insects come to them.
Almost all of the lecturers emphasized that bugs are not only important, but ?endangered.
“I think Bloomington is an environmentally conscious community, and they’re really trying to do more sustainable actions in the area,” Woodard said. “I think people are really interested in learning what they can do to protect insects.”
To start helping the bugs, attendees were given the chance to take home little plants and Milkweed balls to attract pollinators to their ?gardens.
Other fun activities present at the event included a bug safari where children tracked down insects with nets, an imaginary flee circus and cockroach races with roaches at least three inches long, in which the roach on the red track almost always won.
Kids made butterfly masks and tried to see if they could flap their arms as fast as a butterfly, which is typically five to 12 times per second. They could also hold and pet a tarantula as big as a fist, although most preferred to observe from a distance.
“Kids are outside all the time in the summer at parks and in their yards,” Woodard said. “They need to know how to be safe with bugs that aren’t good for them, like ticks, and it’s also good for them to learn about all of the bugs that are great and interesting.”
