U4 Pupil, Isaac Schaad, reports on Upper 4 Academic Scholars trip to Bug Parc...

"My encounters with invertebrates over the years have been concerned primarily with modestly-sized British species. It came as something of a shock, therefore, to find arthropods the size of (or even larger than) my hand in close proximity to me. This sentiment was no doubt shared by all of the 4th form scholars who visited the Bug Parc last week.

Our tour began memorably with an exhibition of dead specimens. Beetles, moths and butterflies were the primary subjects of interest (some of the latter were more than three quarters of a century old). The focus soon turned, however, to arachnids (primarily scorpions) which most certainly were alive!

A species which has long occupied a place on my entomological ‘bucket list’ is the Great Green Bush-cricket (Tettigonia viridissima), largely due to its status of largest British Orthopteran (grasshopper or cricket). Had t. viridissima been present, it would have been dwarfed by the breathtaking, somewhat energetic specimens of Giant Katydid, one of which our guide was sufficiently adept to release from its enclosure and prevent from escaping (the latter something of a feat!).

The astonishing sensory capacity of Mantids was the focus of the subsequent room, before cockroaches took centre stage in an exhibition which shed light on the behaviour of what are, perhaps, the least popular of all insect orders.

After a brief look at crabs and molluscs, any sufferers from arachnophobia would have felt considerable strain in a room consisting of nothing but tarantulas, including the Goliath Bird-eater, the largest extant spider in the world (I dread to think what the British Arachnological Society would have to say if that escaped!).

Our tour was brought to a climax by flying Stick Insects, a death-feigning Darkling Beetle, and, perhaps most fascinating of all, a Leaf-cutting Ant colony of nine hundred thousand, stretching over two large Perspex boxes and forty-two metres of tubing.

I have no doubt that all who attended this trip would have had both an informative and amusing experience, as I did."