Butterfly gardening is a great thing to do in the fall. Even though most butterflies will be settling down for the winter in the next few months, your garden will be ready with lots of host and nectar plants for next year’s butterflies. To get you started, the Houston Museum of Natural Science is hosting […]
An owl butterfly, to be exact. Join us this week at the Cockrell Butterfly Center to celebrate one of our favorite flutterers during An Evening with Owls. Named for the huge owl-like eye spots on the underside of their wings, these big beauties have wingspans that can reach up to seven inches or more! The […]
by Victoria Smith When my children were younger, and I was hip to the toddler scene, I would schedule play dates at all the usual places: I’d push the stroller to the park, load up the red wagon for the zoo, and slip Cheerios to fussy babies during story time at the library. The Houston […]
The Cockrell Butterfly Center (CBC) strives to bring the natural world to within the public’s reach. Visitors enjoy tropical plants and exotic animals exhibited throughout the indoor rainforest, insect zoo, and practical entomology hall, and as they wander through the CBC, they’re sure to ask tons of questions! To keep you informed, we’ve compiled a list […]
One of the most distinctive and easily recognizable insects in the Cockrell Butterfly Center is the rice paper butterfly (Idea leuconoe), also known as the paper kite and the large tree nymph. All these common names allude to the rice paper’s characteristic slow, graceful, and sometimes floppy flight. These butterflies make great, showy additions to […]
The first things all visitors to the Houston Museum of Natural Science see are an 8,000-pound amethyst geode from Uruguay in the lobby and the smiling face of Wanda Hall. And she wouldn’t want it any other way. Hall has been with HMNS for three years, joining the security staff in 2012 right after the […]
After 90 days working at the Houston Museum of Natural Science, here’s the verdict: I love it here! Through research required to compose and edit posts for this blog, I have learned about voracious snails, shark extinction, dinosaur match-ups, efforts to clean up ocean plastic pollution, Houston’s flooding cycle, a mysterious society in south China, […]
Why not put something super nutritious, sustainable, and oh-so-tasty on your grilling skewer this summer? Oh, did I mention it’s a little leggy? We are talking about cooking delicious insects! Since my last blog concerning entomophagy a couple of years ago, this unique eating experience has become quite popular. Many companies are popping up all […]
Summer is here and the kids are out of school, so what better time to escape the heat and join us here at HMNS for some cool and educational arthropod experiences! The Cockrell Butterfly Center will be welcoming back a popular summertime program and introducing a couple of new ones which will be sure to […]
What is an “ant plant”? Because we are striving to portray a “real” tropical rainforest, we have several and plants at the Cockrell Butterfly Center, but what makes them so special? Technically called myrmecophytes (from the Greek myrmeco – “ant”, and phyte – “plant”), these plants have a very special relationship with ants, one that […]
