The Many-Legged Wonders at the Bohart Museum of Entomology

This is Peaches, a Chilean rose hair tarantula (Grammostola rosea) in the Bohart Museum's live petting zoo. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

It featured primarily spiders.

Next week the Bohart Museum is adding more legs. It's hosting an open house themed "Many-Legged Wonders."

The event, free and open to the public, is set from 1 to 4 p.m. Saturday, March 18 in Room 1124 of the Academic Surge Building, 455 Crocker Lane, UC Davis campus.

You can expect to see spiders, millipedes, centipedes, scorpions, tarantulas and isopods. And more.

Tabatha Yang, education and outreach coordinator for the Bohart announced that doctoral candidates Emma Jochim and Xavier Zahnle of the Jason Bond arachnology lab will dispel myths about spiders and millipedes at a question-and-answer session from 1 to 1:30. Doctoral student Iris Quayle will moderate.

From 1:30 to 4 p.m., will be the general open house with a showing of live animals and specimens. UC Davis student Elijah Shih will display his isopods. A family arts-and-crafts activity is also planned.

Research associate Brittany Kohler, the "zookeeper" of the Bohart petting zoo, says the current residents include: 

• Princess Herbert, a Brazilian salmon-pink bird-eating tarantula (Lasiodora parahybana), age estimated to be around 20 (current oldest resident)
• Peaches, a Chilean rose hair tarantula (Grammostola rosea)
• Coco McFluffin, a Chaco golden knee tarantula (Grammostola pulchripes) 
• Beatrice, a Vietnamese centipede (Scolopendra subspinipes), newest resident 
• Two black widows (Latrodectus hesperus)
• One brown widow  (Latrodectus geometricus)

Among the other residents are Madagascar hissing cockroaches, a giant cave cockroach, stick insects, a bark scorpion and ironclad beetles.

The Bohart Museum, directed by UC Davis distinguished professor Lynn Kimsey, houses a global collection of eight million insect specimens, plus the petting zoo and a gift shop stocked with insect-themed books, posters, jewelry, t-shirts, hoodies and more. Dedicated to "understanding, documenting and communicating terrestrial arthropod diversity," the Bohart Museum was founded in 1946 and named for UC Davis professor and noted entomologist Richard Bohart. The insect museum is open to the public Mondays through Thursdays, from 8 a.m. to noon, and 1 to 5 p.m.