Introducing Wasp mimicry to school kids

Today a group of 5th graders from Sells, AZ  visited the University of Arizona Insect collection. Our 'Bugman' Carl Olson wasn't here to entertain them, so I had to come up with something interesting, fun, but educational.

The kids and parents were all Tohono O'odham tribal members, and a great group to talk 'Bugs' to. They admired our pinned specimens of especially pretty  insects. Arizona has so many carismatic species...

By borrowing from other flickr members and using my own quite extensive digital insect collection I prepared a slide show of insects from divers orders that mimic stinging wasps and hornets by displaying yellow-dark banding.
I myself was surprised at some of the striking examples that I found.

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Wasp mimicry (Yellow/dark), a set on Flickr. Click on the link to see all.

The kids went cheerfully along with my flickr slide show calling out the  different insect orders that they recognized.

They loved to handle my two life Agave Weevils. Of course, they also enjoyed hunting one of them down when it flew around the class room - after I had introduced it as a flight-less species.

A big Dynastes male with its wings spread open was everyones favorite. I wished the class had visited in summer, so I could have had some life Dynastes and Oxbeetles and maybe some Chrysinas. All of them occur on Reservation land, but I doubt that many of the kids get to see them.

The teacher Kathryn Killmer gave a great introduction to the path to college and university, and kids and parents were obviously fascinated with our subject matter, so one can hope that some of them  will eventually return to the U of A as students.

I hope they had as much fun as I did.