The special exhibit, however, was wonderful. You walk into a huge room and follow a path, completing a circle of the room. There were thousands of butterflies just flying around, sitting on plants, and actually landing on people. I was told that the exhibit usually happens once a year, so if you are there during the right time, stop and see them. The only downside was that it was so crowded, you could barely move and had to travel at the crowds pace or risk being pushed.

The Insectarium is not only unique on the inside but unique on the outside too. The outside is in the shape of a fly’s head!!! The eyes are made of glass; take a moment to check it out. Upon entering the Insectarium, there is a fun place for kids to draw and learn about insects with trained keepers. When you head down the steps, you will notice thousands of bugs: in shadow boxes on the wall, in miniature environments, and in displays of all kinds.

My favorite displays were of the live insects. There were two that really caught my eye. The first one was of a leaf cutter ant environment. There were two tanks with a sort of "Tree Bridge" connecting them. Here you can see the leaf cutter ants bringing back foliage from one side of the habitat to the other over the "bridge." This is a unique display of watching how hard these little creatures work and seeing how everyone has a job to do. Your kids will love this one.

The other display that really caught my eye was a functioning see-through bee hive. You can see the honeycomb of a beehive between two pieces of glass. Connected to this honeycomb was a tube that actually went from inside the Insectarium to the outside of the building. The bees actually went in and out and collected pollen to keep the hive going. This is great because the Jardin de Botanique is located just outside of the Insectarium. I found that to be very interesting.

Other exhibits include a large scale where you can see how much you would have to carry in weight to match that of a leaf cutter ant. Another display had a number of giant hissing cockroaches. See a black widow spider spinning and living in its own web. You can also check to see what insects live in your neck of the woods.

Overall, this was another great place to visit in Montreal, especially with those who have children in tow.

You will be bombarded by lots of insects, both dead and alive, when you enter. Dead ones are pinned and framed on the walls and live ones crawl around inside glass tanks. There is an impressive display of very large stick insects in one corner of the museum in tanks that reached up to the ceiling. There are also smaller tanks located around the exhibition space with spiders, cockroaches and other various bugs. It is quite informative but it was a little smaller than I imagined it would be.

The Insectarium is famous for holding their insect tastings every two years and one just happened to coincide with my trip. However, I would not have been able to make it there due to the metro strike! I missed the following menu (from their website):

Nachos’n ants Nachos with South American queen ants.

Truly all-dressed pizza Pizza garnished with mealworms.

Galleria canapés Galleria larvae and spinach dip on toast rounds.

Cricket maki Maki with crickets.

Banana birthday cake Our birthday cake! Banana cake with vanilla icing and fruit fly sprinkles.

Cri-cri sucre à la crème Not quite the way your mother makes it! We add grilled crickets to our fudge.

Having eaten crickets before, I was rather looking forward to tasting other creepy crawlies!

If you go, try to incorporate an insect tasting (next one in 2005, more information on their website) and then come back and write about it! I want to hear all! If bugs creep (haha) you out, best not to go. The prices I quoted above were for the high season and include admission to the Botanical Gardens.