GATE entomology visit to Tūhura
By Georgie Watts | Posted: Tuesday October 31, 2023
Some of Trinity's GATE students were lucky enough to get a behind-the-scenes look at the insect life at the Otago museum this week!
We started the day in the jungle for the butterfly release, and we got to go into the quarantine area and meet a few extra many-legged critters and found out about the tarantula's hydraulics system for moving, their defence mechanisms (tarantula's hairy legs, and the cyanide produced by millipedes!), and that butterflies en masse smell really bad!
We were lucky enough to have one of the pest control scientists talk to us about managing insect pests at the museum, and then we got to identify some that had been caught in their traps.
We finished the day with a jaunt through the hands-on science section where our feet left the ground to light a bulb powered but electricity sent through our bodies!
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