Animal Planet star shares how insects affect our everyday life

Ruud Kleinpaste let the Goliath bird-eating tarantula scale his face.

But he wouldn't touch the centipedes.

At 7 to 10 inches long, with powerful mandibles, those centipedes can paralyze and kill.

"They're hunters," he said. "King of the jungle."

Kleinpaste, the lively host of Animal Planet's "Buggin' with Ruud," thrilled audience members Tuesday night in Sycamore with scorpions, tarantulas and other high-powered insects after fascinating them with stories and photos from the world of bugs.

Provided by Jansen Exotics of Zion, the live guests also included a rhinoceros beetle and huge millipedes.

The program was sponsored by Sycamore's Midwest Museum of Natural History. The DeKalb County seat may seem a bit off the beaten path for a celebrity visit, but Chris Brodnicki, the museum's executive director, prevailed upon "The Bugman" to make the trip.

The good-natured New Zealander said he was happy to oblige. He also was supposed to appear on "The Tonight Show" with Jay Leno while in the U.S., but that plan was squelched by the Hollywood writers' strike.

Kleinpaste has been bitten and stung countless times, and even temporarily paralyzed, but he's smitten by his insect friends.

"This world is basically run by bugs," the entomologist said. "They're very important to our survival."

Every bug has its job to do, he said, an assigned task in the industry of nature. They work in delivery, security, food services, waste management, pest control and even medicine and technology. Many serve in transportation.

Kleinpaste showed a close-up photo of an ordinary housefly grazing on what turned out to be dog poop. Attached to one of the fly's back legs, barely visible, was a pseudoscorpion.

This tiny insect hunts mites and other tinier insects, Kleinpaste said, "but every now and then it wants to shift from one compost heap to the next, from one leaf pile to the next, and it's a long way to walk.

"They sit there and wait for the airline to land, and without a ticket or a boarding pass, bravo!" he said. "They're going to the next heap."

Honeybees are renowned as nature's pollinators, of course, but wasps, beetles, flies and moths also fertilize fruits and vegetables, Kleinpaste said. Some bugs, like the lubber grasshopper, contribute by delivering not pollen packages, but seeds. They feed on the seeds, then hop away before pooping.

"That lubber grasshopper helps the plant to put the seeds far away from where they were developed," he said. "A very important job."

Other bugs pull guard duty, protecting the trees they live in. Ants in the Amazon's cecropia tree swarm when the tree is touched. At a signal from their leader -- an emission -- they bite, leaving an easy-to-remember warning for the offender.

Insects keep the world's carnivorous plants alive and also serve as dinner for some birds, amphibians, fish and mammals, including the bats of Carlsbad Caverns, who consume several tons of bugs every night.

"You think about the biodiversity that has to sustain that bat colony alone," Kleinpaste said.

Not only do bugs get sacrificed to higher-ups on the food chain, but some of them also clean up after the meal.

"Insects are probably the No. 1 dung removal company," Kleinpaste said.

The moth community that thrives on Venezuela's three-toed sloth does its part for neighborhood clean-up.

"You can say what you like about the sloth," Kleinpaste said, "but it is very regular. It goes to the lavatory once a week."

When the slow-moving ("energy conserving") mammal ambles down from the treetops to poop, only then do the moths scurry off their host's fur long enough to lay eggs on the dung, jumping back on the taxi before it climbs the tree again.

"Out of these eggs come caterpillars that furiously dig the dung into the ground and feed on it," Kleinpaste said. "They totally annihilate the dung and dig it into the soil within moments.

"The sloth therefore lives a very happy life in the tree, and the tree gets its food back, and the caterpillars have got something to feed on. A happy family."

Kleinpaste has been called "the Steve Irwin of bugs," and the comparison with Australia's late wildlife expert and "Crocodile Hunter" suits the Bugman just fine, he said.

"We've got a bit of that enthusiasm in common, I would say. We have the same message. Whether you (promote conservation) with snakes or crocs or with bugs and the earth, it doesn't matter."

Kleinpaste is particularly fascinated by research in "insect technology" -- bullet-proof vests made of a spider silk five times stronger than steel; a Mars rover styled after a cockroach; smoke detection based on the antennae of the jewel beetle, who smells fire from 15 miles away.

And research in medicine -- human sutures that can be made of insect skin; bandages fashioned from the anti-fungal coating on a certain spider; a stimulant for heart attack victims from the venom of the Chilean rose hair tarantula.

"That's what I find amazing," Kleinpaste said. "This world with millions of species of bugs gives us all these new inventions."

That's why he encourages people to "keep on buggin'."

"Every little creature on earth has a right to live here and a job to do," he said, "and it is our job to keep them going."