Happy Birthday, Dear Charles Darwin

The property wasn’t for sale at this Open House, but children and adults could get up close and personal with live invertebrates! On February 12, the UH Insect Museum, which has one of the largest collections of insects in the Pacific Basin, celebrated the 210^th birthday of Darwin, a crucial contributor to the unifying principle of evolution, with some exciting activities.

Visitors could try their hands at preparing small moths as specimens, meet up with a variety of live terrestrial and marine invertebrates, and check out the collection’s more than 300,000 specimens of scientific value. They also got to try to identify raw field specimens for placement in the collection and take a picture taken with the museum’s mascot, Buzz, the biggest fruit fly ever! They could stump the experts with their own bug pictures for identification and compete in the bug trivia contest!

Most important, guests learned why the Insect Museum is important for a broad range of research projects and discovered how it ties the past and future to the present. Check out more photos of the event here.