Well, not quite, but you can buy a shirt off their rack!
The Bohart Museum of Entomology at the University of California, Davis, has discounted all of its bug-themed t-shirts in its year-around gift shop.
"All t-shirts are on sale for $10 each," said Lynn Kimsey, director of the Bohart Museum and professor of entomology at UC Davis. "We're clearing our stock this month."
You'll find t-shirts featuring monarch butterflies, California dogface butterflies, dragonflies, lady beetles (aka lady bugs), rhinocerous beetles and stick insects (walking sticks), to name a few. The sizes range from infants to youth to adults. The dogface butterfly, Zerene eurydice, is the California state insect.
"They're all $10," Kimsey said. The Bohart Museum accepts credit cards. The sale ends in May.
And speaking of the dogface butterfly, you can also purchase a poster and a book in the gift shop. Bohart associates Greg Kareofelas and Fran Keller and former UC Davis student Laine Bauer, teamed to publish a 35-page children's book, The Story of the Dogface Butterfly. The trio visited the Auburn site for their research, and Kareofelas also reared and photographed a dogface butterfly at his home in Davis. The author, Fran Keller, an entomologist who received her doctorate in entomology from UC Davis, studying with major professor Kimsey, is now an assistant professor at Folsom Lake College. Both Kareofelas provided photos for the book, and Bauer, the drawings, including depictions of the life cycle of the butterfly reared by Kareofelas.
The dogface butterfly poster is the work of Kareofelas and Keller.
The Bohart Museum of Entomology is located in Room 1124 of the Academic Surge Building on Crocker Lane. A world-renowned insect museum, it houses a global collection of nearly eight million specimens. It also maintains a live “petting zoo,” featuring walking sticks, Madagascar hissing cockroaches, praying mantids, and tarantulas. A gift shop, open year around, offers T-shirts, sweatshirts, books, jewelry, posters, insect-collecting equipment and insect-themed candy.
The Bohart Museum's regular hours are from 9 a.m. to noon and 1 to 5 p.m. Mondays through Thursdays. The museum is closed to the public on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays and on major holidays. Admission is free.
For more information, contact the bmuseum@ucdavis.edu or (530) 753-0493 access the website or Facebook page.
Take a look at the group photo below. Can you spot the praying mantis? Can you see a silkworm moth caterpillar? They're there. And also in a larger format.
Attached Images:
Wearing Bohart Museum of Entomology t-shirts are (seated) UC Davis student Wade Spencer (left) and senior museum scientist Steve Heydon. In back are UC Davis students and Bohart associates Eliza Litsey, Parras McGrath, Lohit Garikipati, and Brennen Dyer. Spencer, Litsey, Garikipiati and Dyer are all UC Davis students. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
A Chinese mantis, Tenodera sinensis, in the hands of owner Lohit Garikipati, a UC Davis entomology major who rears mantids. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
Bohart Museum associate Wade Spencer, a UC Davis student majoring in entomology, with a third-instar of the Ceanothus silkworm moth, Hylaphora euryalus. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)