A new exhibition, Bug Lab, hopes to challenge the public to see bugs as "more than just creepy crawlies that need to be squashed".
We need to celebrate and learn from bugs, says the show's creative director and Weta Workshop co-founder Sir Richard Taylor.
"They can teach us a number of very important lessons.
"What bugs are actually doing in the undergrowth of our world is utterly amazing."
(Richard Taylor giving kids a tour of the Bug Lab/ Mike O'Neill Te Papa)
Bug Lab is a $5 million collaboration between Te Papa museum and Weta, and it took 40,000 hours to create.
Visitors can walk through various "bug chambers", including the operating theatre of a wasp as she turns a cockroach into dinner for her larva, and the pink orchid-themed cocoon of a praying mantis.
Mr Taylor says the soundscape "gives the sense of being in a bug orchestra", as visitors hear elements of the bug world surrounding them.
(A Praying Mantis in an orchid themed "bug chamber"/ Kate Whitley Te Papa)
Bug Lab is a collaboration between designers, exhibition developers, scientists, bug specialists, and a sound designer.
It opens to the public on Saturday and will run until Easter, and then travel the world for next ten years starting at the Melbourne Museum.
It's "a wildly creative, wonderfully engaging and exciting educational exhibition," Mr Taylor says.
Newshub.
