It's a well-known rule of show business - never work with children and arachnids. So it was a hairy situation - in more ways than one - yesterday when a group of tarantulas got together with some primary-school students for a promotional photo shoot in Dublin.
Luckily, the event passed off without major incident, apart from the launch of Science Week Ireland 2004. The trick was to keep the spiders apart, according to Lee Gibbs, whose "Big Bug Show" will be one of the week's highlights.
"They can't see very well so they tend to mistake each other for food," he explained. Fears that they might mistake the human hand for food prevented a number of adults present from accepting invitations to hold the tarantulas. But there were no such worries for Erica Kelly (8), or Adam Dunne (6), who survived their close encounters intact.
The spiders will be touring Dublin libraries this week, along with some of Gibbs' other performers, which include centipedes, cockroaches, and leaf-cutter ants. Children will get to touch - and in the case of the ants - eat the show's stars, all in the interests of education.
"The message is that insects are interesting, important - and they taste good," said Gibbs.
While the big attractions at yesterday's launch tended to have six or more legs each, the Government's chief science adviser was also on hand to explain the serious intent of Science Week.
Dr Barry McSweeney wants to allay the fears that many people still have about science and its role in the world. He also aims to make the subject more attractive for secondary-school students and to persuade more of the "right people" to choose science at third level by assuring them of good jobs at the end of their courses.
The emphasis of most of this week's activities will be on fun, however. To underline this, the signature event will be the "Discover Spider Challenge", a mass experiment in which biologists of all ages are asked to register sightings of the Daddy Longlegs, and help prove a theory that it is becoming more common in Ireland through climate change.
Details of this and the week's other events are available on the website www.science.ie
