Canadian Museum of Nature opens new permanent Bugs Alive exhibition

The Canadian Museum of Nature has some new creepy crawly residents who are calling the Centretown museum home.

The new permanent Bugs Alive exhibition kicked off at the museum on Wednesday, April 6 — an exhibition that showcases live insects and arachnids from around the world, including the beloved leafcutter ant.

“Leafcutter ants are fascinating”, Stacy Wakeford, interim chief content officer, said in a statement. “They farm fungus. In fact, they’re the first farmers on the planet. Next to humans, they form the most complex society on Earth.”

Visitors will be able to watch these busy little bugs at work in their specially-designed 3.3-metre-long habitat, cutting vegetation and transporting leaves to their fungal nests inside transparent orbs.

Live-animal exhibitions are always a popular draw for the public,” Wakeford said. “Seeing live creatures up close helps people connect with nature and better appreciate biodiversity,” she said. “In Bugs Alive, visitors will learn about the importance of insects and arachnids to the environment and to biodiversity.”

Twenty other species of insects, tarantulas, beetles, scorpions and millipedes are also featured.

The exhibition extends into the museum solarium — with its natural light and lush vegetation, its tranquil setting in which to relax and connect with the natural world, the museum adds.

Other highlights include a micro-eye stations where visitors can examine preserved specimens under a magnifier, a climbable model of a Hercules beetle that provides opportunities for play and fun photos.

Timed-tickets for the exhibit are in effect and can be purchased through the museum’s website.

Fun facts about leafcutter ants

• Leafcutter ants can strip as much as 17 per cent of the leaf biomass from plants in their ecosystem and can clear entire trees in under a day;
• They carefully grow gardens of fungus to feed their larvae. They fertilize the fungus with layers of leaves that they cut from plants surrounding the nest;
• Their nests contain thousands of rooms and millions of ants. Every ant has a job, from solider to garbage collector;
• They don’t eat the leave they cut. The ants get their nutrients from sap, and all the leaves to to the fungus farm;
• They’re typically found in the tropic forests of Central and South America. They can also be found in a few of the southern U.S. states.