“GRAND RAPIDS — A giant, robotic grasshopper crouched on his haunches behind Veronica Kandl as she peeked at real insect carcasses inside specimen cases featured in Grand Rapids Public Museum’s “Big, BIG BUGS!” exhibit opening Saturday. When the 13-foot grasshopper suddenly lunged forward, stood on his back legs and revealed a 21-foot wingspan, Kandl jumped.
“Whew, that scared me,” she said, despite witnessing the lively liftoff at least a dozen times before.
As part of the museum’s exhibits team, Kandl helped design and create both realistic and imaginary environments that aim to offer viewers a “bug’s eye point of view” of the grasshopper and five of his full-body, animatronic insect friends. The exhibit runs through May 31.
“The idea is that you’re coming into the bug’s world,” Kandl, curatorial research manager, said. “We wanted to create settings where you felt you were in their territory; bring you closer to the action.”
The grasshopper (a term interchangeable with locust, according to Kandl) invades the museum’s third floor gallery alongside two atlas beetles, a praying mantis, a Chinese caterpillar and an Asian stick bug. Each of these creepy, crawly, crunching critters is inflated to proportions between 30 and 120 times its actual size and resides in a fanciful, comical habitat.
“The exhibits team wanted to play with scale and proportion,” said Kristy Harrington, the museum’s marketing and public relations manager. “This is their interpretation of switching those proportions. It’s a playful, cabin-fever busting exhibit. People get to play and explore and it’s a topic that’s quite fascinating for everyone.”
The bugs were rented from Japan-based Kokoro Company, but the habitats are exclusive to the museum.
The leaping locust lords over his own patch of grass and sports a can of “Rid-A-Human Repellent,” while the stick insect nestles inside his dirt bungalow, surrounded by framed pictures of bug relatives and watches a vintage bug movie trailer on his television. He keeps a man in a jar on a nearby bookshelf.
The caterpillar worms around a massive bug-collecting net as the praying mantis hides and hisses behind a veil of dangling grass. The two atlas beetles knock horns as they battle for territory along the back wall.
Visitors are invited to interact with the bugs, whether crawling through a worm hole to achieve a bug’s-eye view of the fighting beetles or parting the grass to come face-to-face with the praying mantis.
In addition to the full-body insects, “Big, BIG BUGS!” also features massive, button-operated mosquito, honeybee and dragonfly heads that suck, sting and chew.
Illustrated character “Bug man Jim,” based on retired science teacher and museum educational staff member Jim Foerch, appears on signs throughout the exhibit and provides visitors with bug facts pertaining to life-cycles, anatomy, adaptations and more. Foerch and other education staff and volunteers will host school programs and other events during the course of the bug show.
More than 3,000 mounted insect specimens also will be on view inside 10 cases courtesy of museum volunteer Shirley Folkertsma’s family, which has collected bugs for several decades.
The show also includes a “Bookworm Corner” and interactive spider’s web.
Throughout the exhibit run, “Crickets & Constellations” will screen inside the planetarium. This new and improved show boasts a camping, outdoors-y theme.
According to Harrington, the exhibit and additional programming are suitable for all ages.
“The little ones will see the bugs for what they are — you know, crunching and munching bugs,” she said. “But the exhibit is also educational for older kids and adults.””
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