Insect wranglers invade the Garden at Southwestern science EXPO

ASU students host garden ant-ventures. Credit to Adrian Smith.

Raymond Mendez, the "original insect wrangler" has tamed 25,000 roaches and trained moths to attack on command for the movie "Silence of the Lambs." He and his creepy crawlers will be part of Southwest's first Social Insect Science EXPO on Feb. 20 at the Desert Botanical Garden.

The EXPO brings insects and displays into the garden, together with some of the top scientists from Arizona State University, their favorite critters and Arizona families. Kids will be able to peer inside bee colonies and rub elbows-to-antennae with leaf-cutter, harvester and trap-jaw ants. Mendez is the founder of the company Work as Play, which develops people-friendly exhibits for zoos and museums. He will bring his live naked mole-rat colonies (one of the few mammal species that have a society resembling ants and bees) and ants to share, and talk about his career with bugs, science, television and design.

"Ray is a creative genius and a naturalist. He combines his artistic vision with a close knowledge of and feel for biology," says Tate Holbrook, EXPO host and ant investigator in the laboratory of ASU Professor Jennifer Fewell. Holbrook and his fellow EXPO hosts Dani Moore, Rebecca Clark, Clint Penick, Rick Overson and Adrian Smith are all doctoral students at ASU. They met Mendez in Portal, Ariz., in connection with the California Academy of Science's Ant Course held at the American Museum of Natural History's Southwestern Research Station, where Mendez also contributes as a research field associate.

The EXPO ant-venture begins at 6 p.m., with Mendez's talk at 7:30 p.m. The events will be held in the garden's Dorrance Auditorium. Entrance to the garden and events are free and open to the public. Refreshments will be served. Seating for the talk is limited and filled on a first-come, first-serve basis.

Mendez's career began with the American Museum of Natural History in New York, where he helped create nature dioramas. From there, he went into television and advertising. Mendez says that while he is perhaps most notably recognized for designing Ronald McDonald and the Hamburglar for McDonalds that by "combining his skill in design with his interest – 'obsession?' – for insects, he has made a career bringing the public in closer contact with the sometimes creepy, sometimes inspiring world of insects. Currently, he rears colonies of ants for live-insect displays in museums around the world and raises naked mole-rats. Mendez and his mole-rats were featured in the 1998 avant-garde movie "Fast, Cheap and Out of Control."

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More information about the EXPO is at http://sols.asu.edu/expo. Directions to the Desert Botanical Gardens are at http://www.dbg.org.