This Wednesday, Lower School students congregated in Sillers Hall for the Icky Yucky Gross Bug Show, presented by the Parent Teacher Fellowship Arts Alliance. There were gasps of amazement when educational performance artist David Herbelin presented the assembly with the Madagascar hissing cockroach, oohs and aahs as the introduction of the bug-eating blue-tongued skink, and wide-eyed stares at the Chilean rose-haired tarantula. Throughout the performance, the children saw, touched, and learned about these animals, their habitats, and the reasons for their appearance and behavior.

Reasons for animals’ behavior, as the Lower School learned, includes startling predators, as when the Madagascar hissing cockroach “hisses” by emitting air from tiny exchange holes in its exoskeleton. Other bugs have found different ways to avoid taking their place at the bottom of the food chain: The giant centipede wrapped around Mr. Herbelin’s hand secrets a bad-smelling and bad-tasting oil that makes it less palatable to potential predators.

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The children also learned about camouflage as a way to avoid predation, when they noticed that the centipedes are the same color as the dirt in which they live.

Once the audience understood the bugs’ appearance and behavior, they found them a little less scary, though after the assembly, Preschooler T.J. Pavia still thought that “those millipedes are really yucky.”

Mr. Herbelin also displayed a silk scarf, which insects and bugs helped produce, and red lipstick, in which they are an ingredient. Bugs and insects play a part in our everyday lives, and we do in theirs as well. Our daily choices, ranging from making ecologically sound decisions, to simply watching where we step, can have a positive impact on insects and bugs in general. Mr. Herbelin told the children that between one to five species of bugs and insects become extinct each day.

Preschool teacher Penny Tacquard thought that we could all learn from this information: “Teaching the children to understand the benefits that certain insects hold for us humans was a fascinating part of the Bug Show, as was the fact that numerous bug species are killed off each year.”

There was something else that a few members of the assembly took away from the assembly—in their stomachs! Bugs are considered fine cuisine in some cultures, and each teacher selected a student to take a turn sampling a specially-prepared roasted nutritious worm! With the information that not all bugs are good to eat, but that these had been properly prepared, the students and one lucky teacher crunched on a treat that they described as “nutty,” “crunchy,” and of course, “tastes like chicken.”

The PTF Arts Alliance sponsored this educational visit from the Icky Yucky Gross Bug Show, which is part of the Orange County Performing Arts Center Arts Teach program for educational assembly artists.

Tags: Lower School, PTF