The World Insect Museum

The Collector: a dedicated couple with an odd obsession.

By Pim Kemasingki

On a quiet soi off Huay Keaw road in Chiang Mai, a large building looms down onto the quiet street, drawing attention to itself with its massive paintings, neon pictures and statues of insects. A sign on the door tells visitors to ring a bell and I did. Soon Khun Manop Rattanalitikul appeared in his fishnet tank top and a beaming smile to show off his newly opened World Insect Museum. "My wife and I collect. It hasn't often mattered to us what we collect, just as long as we can collect. I have here collections of insects, rocks, coins, minerals and much more." gushed Khun Manop enthusiastically.

Khun Manop and his wife, Dr. Rampa have both recently decided to open up their life long eclectic collection for the world to see. Once inside, the museum is like a spectacularly kitsch work of art. Just about any natural collectable item is on display and the downstairs reception area is adorned with tree roots claiming to be millions of years old, tree trunks burrowed through by bizarre insects, bee hives hanging off ceilings with hundreds of dried bees glued on for effect and dried insects hiding in dried leaves and branches. Garish fake orchids sprout out of these boughs, each with its own little insect stuck on to it and mosquitoes swarm around under wooden chairs as an uninvited authentic effect.

Khun Manop proudly leads the way to the museum floor where showcases line the walls and ceilings with insects and anything else that has caught Khun Manop's fancy over the years. Dr. Rampa is an entomologist who used to be the head of the mosquito biology and systematics section of the Entomology Department, US Medical Component, AFRIMS until her recent retirement. She is a world expert on mosquitoes and has in a small showcase, a collection of 420 species of mosquitoes or Culicine and Anopheline all superbly labelled and categorised. Fearsome diagrams and charts show the 13 disease-carrying mosquitoes of Thailand and types of diseases carried. A small microscope next to the chart invites visitors to experience a close encounter with all the gory details of a particularly dangerous mossie skewered down by a small needle. Khun Manop is a superbly eccentric guide; "This mosquito over here only lays eggs in small wooden caverns in a tree. This one here lays eggs under water and doesn't even surface to breathe, what it does is drill a hole through a plant root and breathes through the leaves of the plant - no amount of DDT sprayed on the water will get to these babies!" Dishing out mosquito trivia, Dr Rampa and Manop Rattanarithikul are considered world experts in mosquitoes and have discovered eighteen new species which now all proudly carry the Rattanarithikul surname.

"When I was three years old," reminisces Khun Manop, "My family took me to be photographed with my ninety year old grandmother. The moment that frightening black hood went over the photographer's head, I started howling with fear and refused to stop until we had walked home. This happened four times until my poor aged grandmother asked to stop for a rest on the fourth trip. At that time there were always vultures circling Chiang Mai city and we stopped off near a garbage dump for a rest. Searching the dump, I discovered a piece of rock which fascinated me. It was nothing special, but my shrewd grandmother informed me that it was indeed a vulture's egg and she would allow me to keep it if I agreed not to cry when I had my photo taken. That stone is not in the least bit precious and would mean nothing to the rest of the world, but to me, it was the first time I had found something in nature that although misguided, I thought to be precious and I decided to love and value it. " The stone now hangs on the wall for all to see. Next to it, the photograph of Khun Manop's grandmother and himself that was finally taken after four sittings, with an inconspicuous lump jutting out of child Manop's pocket. Through his years at Thammasat University studying law, Khun Manop kept near him his precious stone and since then has always been picking things up and collecting.

After university he joined a malaria research group and learnt all about mosquitoes and other insects. In the early 1960's he was invited to the Smithsonian Institute for two years to do research and to label species of mosquitoes. Khun Manop and his wife Dr. Rampa are both absolutely passionate about their collection and their museum is a showcase of their life as much as of world insects.

The effort put into the building of the museum, the careful labelling, preserving and categorising and the vast selection of world insects truly show the dedication of this couple. One wall of the museum is covered by hundreds of butterflies from around the world. Gigantic Thai night hawk moths the colours of earth, huge Ornithoptera goliath from Papua New Guinea with its rich dark striped wings, heavenly Morpho godarti from Bolivia with its opal -like translucence all look so alive as if they were ready to flitter away the moment someone opened their glass case, like sleeping beauties pretending deep sleep. Next to the butterflies is a rather disturbing collection of stones and rocks that Khun Manop has diligently collected over the years. With pride, he shows his little rocks with marker pens marking where they were from. "This is from the lava of mount Fuji, this is from the Great Wall of China, it's genuine you know. These are from the Coliseum, this from the Hypo-Centre where the Atomic bomb landed on the 6th of August 1945 in Hiroshima, this from the Vatican." I refrained from asking how he had managed to pry such a collection from such monuments and instead murmured my fascination as Khun Manop proudly moved me along to the next collection.

Rapidly moving on from the stones, a large showcase displays stunning members of the mantid order, Orthoptera, family Mantidae. One fascinatingly grotesque mantid has a six-inch parasite hanging out of it which Dr. Rampa had discovered while dissecting. Another stick insect, Orthoptera, family Phasmatidae was over a foot and a half long. We then moved along to the beetles, where a large black velvety beetle, order Coleoptera family Scarabaeidae, Goliathus goliathus was pinned on the wall next to his extended family from Cameroon. Ultramarine, ochre, vermilion, cadmium and gold are just a few colours to be seen in the natural colour spectrum the insects provide in this amazing museum.

There is also a rather impressive shell collection which includes the rare Glory of India, the Golden Cowry and some other rarities which are yet unnamed. Leaf, fish, crab, shark tooth, dinosaur bone and insect fossils from hundreds of millions of years ago sit in a showcase next to teak and tree fossils of at least equal age. Mimical camouflaged insects perch on leaves and vines, six fingered chickens and chunks of meteorites are just some of the items the Rattanarithikuls have collected over the last 40 years.

With so many dead animals glued, pinned or perched on walls, Dr. Rampa is eager to point out that they have not gone around killing all of these insects and animals. Most specimens collected had completed their life cycle or had been found dead by logging, road building etc. and brought to the couple by villagers. Many exotic species are exchanged from museums and private collections world-wide and every effort is made to study the insects to help understand them.

An incredibly entertaining, well-presented, informative and funky museum, the World Insect Museum is well worth a visit.

The cost of upkeep for thousands of dead creatures is steep and therefore the entrance fee is rather high at 200 baht a head for a foreigner and 120 for Thais.