The day-long event is another in the Museum's Family Day series which provide a unique blending of science education, hands-on interactive experience and just plain fun. Bug-Mania 3 is presented in conjunction with the Museum's fascinating science exhibit Smart Bugs: Insect Societies which explores the secretive world of social insects like ants, bees and termites, the colonies they build, the "rules" of their societies and the organizational skills that result in their societies behaving as if they were single organisms.

Bug-Mania 3 opens to visitors on Saturday at 11:00 a.m. Activities will be held inside the Museum and outside in the Alice Ransom Dreyfuss Memorial Garden. At 1:00 and 3:00 p.m, visitors can enjoy the show Squads of Arthropods by Billy B. Show, a performance about spiders, insects and other creepy crawlers set to music and dance.

Hundreds of painted Lady Butterflies will be released individually by visiting children and their families at 12:00, 2:00 and 4:00 p.m. Museum science educators will introduce children to an assortment of live caterpillars, scarab beetles, tarantulas and scorpions who reside in the Museum's Mini-Zoo and will meet "Betty the Bug Lady." Educators will discuss the creatures, their eating and living habits and particular physical attributes. Young visitors will "saddle-up" for cockroach races -- Bug Mania's version of the Kentucky Derby – and participate in other fun, instructor-taught activities.

Sure to draw its share of reactions from kids and parents alike are various examples and samples of bugs as food including such delectable edibles as honey and candy, cookies and snacks that include insects as nutritional ingredients.

Smart Bugs, which will remain on exhibit through 2008, is made possible by the generous support of Arlene and Len Lieberman, The Turrell Fund, The Newark Museum Volunteer Organization and The Fred C. Rummel Foundation. -- www.newarkmuseum.org