Spiders, krill and roaches take over BugFest
Here I have krill
Krill are tiny marine arthropods AKA marine bugs that live
in all the world's oceans
These little animals are everywhere in the world
And they are quite literally the powerhouse of the oceans
What I find fascinating is that we are highlighting krill
this year for Bug Fest
When most people think of bugs they think of beetles
spiders ants scorpions wasps or bees but maybe not all
of the diversity of arthropods that we share the planet
with especially stuff out in the oceans that we don't
eat that much but that everything else does
So this thing is actually not dead
This is the exoskeleton of a tarantula
So this tarantula is probably still alive here at the
museum but this is the skin that it shed as
it was growing
You can see the top of the body was right
here and what happened was when it outgrew the skin
it flipped over on its back and then it started
to wiggle its way out of this skin
Leaving behind we can see some of the chambers that
make up the body and that make up the legs
Spiders like tarantulas control their leg movements through hydraulic pressure
like fluid pumping in and out
And so it's cool once they come out to be
able to see those cavities that are left behind
In the tarantula molds too you can sometimes spot the
fangs although I don't see them here and at Bug
Fest people will be able to get pretty close and
pretty personal with these
Don't worry we're not gonna let one crawl on you
but you will get to see live tarantulas
This is a millipede
It's a giant African millipede
You can see where they get the name
Each one of these millipedes is between like 7 and
10 inches long
Big critters lots of legs
Of course we have centipedes and millipedes in North Carolina
as well but ours don't get anywhere near this large
Buck Fest is happening at the North Carolina Museum of
Natural Sciences from 10 to 7 on Saturday September 20th