Sam Noble museum hopes visitors can see beauty in ‘Ugly Bugs’
The Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History and the Oklahoma Microscopy Society celebrate 20 years of the Oklahoma Ugly Bug contest with an exhibition of larger-than-life photos of insects, all captured by the contest’s previous winners.
Open to Oklahoma elementary schools, the annual “Ugly Bug” competition is designed to get students interested in microscopy and entomology.
The rules are simple: Each school can submit one bug — the “uglier,” the better. Entries are processed at scanning electron microscope labs across the state, currently including Oklahoma State University, Phillips 66 and the Samuel Roberts Noble Microscopy Laboratory on the University of Oklahoma campus, and imaged by a scanning electron microscope.
The school with the winning entry, judged by a group of Oklahoma Microscopy Society members, scientists and volunteer judges, receives a Leica stereomicroscope.
The resulting images from 20 of the contest’s past winners are weird, strangely fascinating and, well, downright ugly, museum officials said. And they’re on display at the museum through June 18.
“This exhibit provides a great opportunity for kids to learn more about the world around them and do so on a much different scale than they’re used to,” said Katrina Menard, entomology curator at the Sam Noble museum.
“Visitors will be able to see the beauty of these bugs that they wouldn’t be able to see with the naked eye.”
The exhibit also incorporates displays that educate about entomology, physics, microscopy and mathematics. And, in addition to the ugly bug photos, the exhibit features packaging used to transport the bugs from the classroom through the postal service and to the lab. Classmates often brainstorm the best ways to ship each bug and those methods, Oklahoma Microscopy Society members say, can get interesting.
“They range from Ziploc bags where the bug may be crushed and unusable by us, to very elaborate ideas,” said Preston Larson, research scientist at the Samuel Roberts Noble Electron Microscopy Laboratory.
“You get a lot of Kodak film containers, some iPhone boxes, and I’ve even seen one in a Styrofoam egg.”
The exhibit is sponsored by Love’s Travel Stops and Country Stores with support from Phillips 66, Leica and scanning electron microscope labs across the state.
The Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History is on the OU campus at J. Willis Stovall Road and Chautauqua Avenue. For accommodations, call 325-4712 or go to SamNobleMuseum.ou.edu.