Are you serious?
"Totally," MacEntee says.
It turns out that male dung beetles collect dung from animals -- they're actually quite discriminating and focus solely on the poop from herbivores such as cows -- and try to roll the biggest dung ball they can to attract a female, who then lays her eggs there.
In the Kid Zone, kids can jump around inside a giant inflatable caterpillar. They can make Bugfest buttons and create a bug with foam and other materials from the Scrap Exchange in Durham.
Budding gardeners can learn about hydrogardening and bugs and their relationship to plants and flowers in the Garden Zone.
Activities take place inside the museum and outside on Bicentennial Plaza. They will also spill over onto the Capitol grounds.
Inside the museum, kids can crawl through a model of a rotten log, home sweet home to a lot of critters. And they'll learn how Bess beetles snack on wood and break it down to dirt.
Older children can participate in a scavenger hunt that takes them to various stations to answer questions like how many pounds of bugs people inadvertently eat each year in processed food. The answer: at least one, in things like flour, hot dogs and canned vegetables. Apparently, the U.S. Department of Agriculture sets limits on how many insect legs or the like can be found in a jar of peanut butter, for example. Those guidelines will be on display.
Cafe Insecta is a returning favorite, and this year it has some new offerings, including fire-roasted giant ants from South America that are as long as 2 inches.
Try a new side dish, silkworm pupae hummus, prepared by Acro Cafe chef Matt Busch.
"People really eat this stuff," MacEntee said. "He'll make pans and pans and pans of 'Ant-chiladas,' and they will be totally gone. He can't make enough."
For the older crowd
In past years, the festivities ended at 5 p.m. This year, the museum is trying to woo an older crowd by staying open until 9 p.m.
In the additional four hours, there will be live music, beer and wine sales and gourmet bug-cooking demonstrations by people like Hal Daniel, a biologist-anthropologist at East Carolina University. He will lecture on "The ABC's of Entomophagy," which means the act of eating insects.
According to Daniel, there are a few salient points here. Namely: Everyone around the world except Americans and Europeans eats bugs. And why not? Some bugs have more protein than fish, and they're devoid of growth hormones and antibiotics.
"They're basically the green food of the future," Daniel said.
Americans' aversion to eating bugs is purely psychological, he said. After all, shrimp and crabs are considered delicacies when "all they do is eat detritus off the bottom of the ocean."
Daniel will dish up Cream of Asparagus and Katydid Soup and Cicadas a la Romana, which features the bugs sauteed in garlic and olive oil, tossed with fresh peas and tomato sauce, all served on parmesan-sprinkled focaccia.
"My students love that," he said. "They eat it all up."
Want to get up close and personal with maggots and cockroaches? Check out a talk by Josie Glausiusz, senior associate editor at Discover magazine and author of "Buzz: The Intimate Bond between Humans and Insects."
She'll screen a slide show of creepy-crawlies and explain how we actually depend on insects, whether we like to admit it or not. They pollinate our crops, decompose dead vegetation, fertilize the soil.
"In your own way, you too can grow to love a bug," she said.
So what happens when Glausiusz sees a cockroach in her kitchen?
"I kill it," she admits. "I'm not saying you have to love all insects."
