Imagining Insects

On Display: Sept 27–Summer, 2026
Location: Ground Floor

Explore insects like never before through live enclosures, rare pinned specimens, and interactive visitor engagement. Plus a 13 foot mantis!

It might bug you to know this, but insects are the most common animals on our planet and they live just about everywhere life can exist on its surface. Over 1.5 million species have been named, which is 3 times the number of all other species of animal combined. Understanding and appreciating them has never been more important.

By Imagining Insects we can actually understand a great deal about the amazing structures of their bodies, sequences of their lives, and their ability to thrive in nature.

Insects are incredible! Their highly complex bodies allow individual species to take on unique forms which make them unlike any other insects, and wildly different from other types of animals.

At the same time, every insect — from the solitary, predatory praying mantis to the largest ant colony— have the same set of basic anatomy features in common, such that we are able to categorize them all together into the largest and most diverse group of animals that exists on Earth!

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