The title of the program last night was “Planet Insect” given by Fred Sorenson of the University of Alaska Cooperative Extension Service.
I had heard Fred talk before on the subject of bugs, and remembered that he was a fabulous speaker. In fact, I’m rather proud to say that it was my idea to have him be a part of our TNATZ programs this year! Katie, our education director at the zoo, told Fred after his talk that his spot on next year’s program is pretty much guaranteed – he was that good!
What makes Fred such a great speaker is that he is truly excited about the subject. He’s very animated when he speaks, and uses his entire body to illustrate his point. And he comes with his own bug collection – trays of all kinds of bugs, displayed on the boards with tiny pins thru their bodies.
The program started out with him asking the crowd what kind of pets they had: dogs, cats, reptiles, and the like. Turned out that only one individual in a crowd of well over 50 people had an insect for a pet.
Why is that?
According to Fred, and I have to agree with him, humans are almost instinctually “freaked out” by insects because they are so NOT like us. They have too many legs, they don’t have a recognizable face with ears and eyes where they belong, and their life cycles are so alien to ours.
Speaking of aliens, the movie “Alien” (staring Sigourney Weaver) was actually based on insectoid behaviors!
After talking about insects and all their fascinating facts & statistics, he turned the kids loose on the lawn. He had a bunch of little glass vials with lids which he handed out to everybody, telling them to go find a bug!
And find bugs, they did.
Some really cool ones, too. One little girl even managed to find a bug that stumped the expert: Fred did not know what it was. I told her that she should go to school to become an Entomologist so that she could figure out what it was for herself!
He did a great presentation and was excited about it. The kids seemed to love going out and collecting bugs.
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