NEW ORLEANS — The pesky buzzing and flying critters humans spend a lifetime swatting and squashing have been transformed into objects of study and veneration in a sparkling new museum.

Dung beetles, scorpions, ants, dragonflies, earthworms, butterflies and termites get their due in the Audubon Insectarium, which opened June 13 on the first floor of the U.S. Custom House. It is the city's first major tourist attraction to open since Hurricane Katrina.

Ted Jackson/Newhouse News Service (ENLARGE)

At the new Audubon Insectarium, a timeline illustrates just how long our buggy buddies have been around, and how many varieties there are.

MICHAEL DEMOCKER/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER (ENLARGE)

The insectarium's Cokie Bauder positions a Queen Alexandra's Birdwing, the largest and rarest butterfly in the world.

Photos: Watch, eat bugs IF YOU GO Getting there: Driving: New Orleans is about 470 miles from downtown Atlanta, about a 7 1/2-hour drive. Flying: Expect to pay $165 or more round trip to New Orleans from Atlanta. About the museum: Audubon Insectarium, 423 Canal St. 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Tuesdays-Sundays. $15 adults, $10 ages 2-12, $12 ages 65 and older. 1-800-774-7394, www.auduboninstitute.org Information: New Orleans Metropolitan Convention and Visitors Bureau, 2020 St. Charles Ave. 1-800-672-6124, www.neworleanscvb.com. Louisiana travel stories [an error occurred while processing this directive] Photos: Travel / Southeast Galleries Latest deals! Back to: Travel | Southeast destinations

Adventurous children can let ebony-colored ox beetles scamper over their hands. Adults' ears may prick up when they hear Jay Leno, Joan Rivers and Brad Garrett providing voices for animated insects in a theater show complete with special effects that draw spectators into the action with chilly blasts of air and the simulated stomping of the Goliath beetle.

Like every other museum, the insectarium has a snack area, the Tiny Termite Cafe, which is festooned with insect-related paraphernalia, including — believe it or not — repellent. In a display reminiscent of the bug in amber in "Jurassic Park," there's an array of candy called Hot Licks: lollipops with real insects inside.

Since this museum is in a city known for distinctive food, an adjoining eatery, Bug Appétit, has singular culinary offerings: cooked insects, chiefly crickets, waxworms and mealworms. Among the menu items are chocolate chirp cookies and red beans and yikes. When local chefs were asked to submit bug dishes, Leah Chase came up with roasted crickets.

Crickets, which also serve as food for many of the live exhibits, are "the rice of the bug world," said staff entomologist Zack Lemann.

Lemann talked matter-of-factly about preparing dragonflies as hors d'oeuvres — flash-fried, sautéed and topped with Dijon butter — and said insects can be used in everyday cooking, too.

"If you've got a recipe that calls for small chopped nuts, you can add insects," he said.

Although such exotic entrees may make fussy eaters queasy, Lemann said it shouldn't offend New Orleanians, who happily dismember boiled crawfish, slurp down raw oysters by the dozen and relish snails in lemon-butter sauce.

"They eat these bugs all over the world," said Ron Forman, president and chief executive officer of the Audubon Nature Institute, parent organization of the insectarium.

Getting people used to thinking such unconventional thoughts about creatures they ordinarily regard as pests is part of the goal of the insectarium, he said.

"We're teaching in an entertaining way," said Forman, who sported a red Ferragamo necktie bearing a design that was crawling with insects.

The $25 million museum, an Audubon goal since 1991, also features cases of about 10,000 precisely pinned insects, many of which have iridescent exoskeletons that glisten in the light.

Among the mounted specimens on view are two Queen Alexandra's Birdwings, rare butterflies more than a century old that are worth $10,000 apiece, spokeswoman Melissa Lee said. They're costly because they're rare — they're captured on one side of a mountain in New Guinea — and their exhibit area will have a special security system.

The insectarium also has interactive exhibits, a scorpion pit and chandeliers embellished with metal Venus' flytraps. There's even an "underground" segment, made to resemble a hugely enlarged trowelful of garden soil, that offers an earthworm's view of life: The floor is squishy, oversize models of bugs cling to the earthenlike walls and visitors can peer up through a hole, where they see a bird, at ground level, looking into the hole and trolling for snacks.

In what had been the massive building's carriageway, likenesses of dragonflies as big as model airplanes glide on tracks above spectators and a timeline shows that insects have been around for millions of years.

Although the dragonflies might seem disturbingly large, Lemann said they're not all that exaggerated: Ancient dragonflies had wingspans as wide as 3 feet.

If such information makes people scratch their heads in happy puzzlement, that's the point, Forman said.

"Remember that look of wonderment when we were kids and caught doodlebugs?" he said. "We've lost that."

But at the insectarium, he said, "we're taking that back."

Throughout the 23,000-square-foot space, which boasts Terminix as a major corporate sponsor, there's one overarching lesson: If we didn't have bugs, the world would be much worse off.

No one disputes that termites can destroy houses and that mosquitoes can transmit dreaded diseases such as malaria and yellow fever. But insects also can do good work. Some ants, for instance, feed on fungi, silkworms spin silk and bees spread pollen and make honey.

"We're trying to change the attitudes of people [to show them] that bugs are worth protecting," Forman said.

Pope is a staff writer for The Times-Picayune of New Orleans.