Bakersfield's
Bakersfield’s Bug Zoo offers an interactive experience for visitors, where they can experience the sights, sounds, and smells
of live creepy crawlies, including giant cockroaches, beetles, walking sticks, praying mantids,
centipedes, millipedes, scorpions, and tarantulas.
Garden spiders may not be your cup of tea, but seeing a goliath tarantula, which can grow to a foot in diameter, might captivate your inner child — or any child! Bakersfield’s Bug Zoo is a microcosmic world of bugs — all busily crawling, buzzing, gnawing, and in general, doing what bugs do. From behind the safe barrier of a glassed enclosure, you can get within inches if you want.
Some insects are harmful to humans by spreading disease, infecting our homes, and eating our crops and stored food.
However, most insects are harmless and beneficial. Insects play a large role in pollinating many important food crops as well
as our flower gardens. They decompose dead plant and animal matter, which helps to recycle nutrients back into the earth.
The burrowing and tunneling activity of many insects aerates and mixes the soil. Insects are a food source for wildlife and even
for people in many countries. Insect products like honey, wax, silk, shellac, and dye are an important economic source in
most countries. Some insects are even important in the development of genetic and scientific research.
Without insects, the earth as we know it would not survive!
