Montreal Insectarium — Attraction in Montreal

This is an absolutely mind-blowing experience worth doing, even if you are not a fan of insect. Believe me, I am not either, especially when they crawl around or near me, but they are such a fascinating and amazing creatures on this planet and this place pays them an excellent tribute!

It is surprisingly a very popular place (yeah, I've heard that!), therefore book your tickets in advance. Only a certain number of people can be inside at certain times. We got kind of lucky and were able to secure a ticket on the day of our visit, however with the first available slot 3 hours from the time of purchase. Our time of entry was 5:30 PM and we were worried 30 minutes for a visit is not enough (the Insectarium closes at 6 PM), however this was just the last entry as we were able to stay until 6:30 PM, that was the time when staff was trying to get us to exit. I found that one hour was a perfect amount of time to experience everything! All amenities are located at the ground floor such as lavatories, locker rooms and ticket selling counter. Please be aware separate ticket is needed in order to enter the botanical gardens.

There are couple of section on the ground floor worth visiting. First one would be section where you can see how insect perceive the world through their eyes, how they see things differently given the anatomy of their eyes or how they can see ultraviolet light as oppose to humans who cannot. In the other section, called Head-to-Head, we were able to sat in front of a booth featuring live insect and observe how they behave, eat or mate!  However the most fascinating section on the ground floor was the dome - a round room with showcases of specimen on the wall. Truly breathtaking view of more than 3 000 insects, bugs, butterflies and many more! The square showcases are arrange by color (its truly shocking how pure red color is rare in nature) in the upper row and on the bottom row they are placed by their evolutionary characteristics, so you can see for example leaf-looking like insect, insects with the largest antennas, insect that feed on specific substrate (plants, flesh), or the difference between males and females. It is really cleverly done as there are pictograms around to help navigate visitors, however I wish the explanations were more ''on hand'' available, not only inside the interactive machines near the entrance/exit. But apparently you can download and app and read about them on the phone, which is handy! In the dome, there are also some seat available. It was truly mesmerizing to watch the showcases of all the specimen, they were very tastefully done. I really enjoyed it!

The upper floor is the one where we got to interact with the insect! We could get as close as we wanted to them, which sounds scary, but it was not! The creatures that are immediately visible are the butterflies and moths, but I have seen them before in other places so it was nothing jaw-opening for me. It was nice, but its really difficult to spot a sitting butterfly with open wings. However seeing giant Africans centipede up close or watching Leafcutter ant at work was beyond my expectations! I loved the ants so much, they are such an incredible creature and watching them ''at work' was simply breathtaking. This experience trumps any National Geographic videos!

One other kind of insect that cough my attention - however it took me some time to spot them - were the ''walking sticks''. Its really hard to see them (duh, they look like branches that are part of the plant), but there are signposts to help visitor to detect them, so pay a lot of attention here. Unfortunately there were a lot of people just passing by without even stopping and admiring these creatures.

The overall experience is wonderful and great, and I loved all of it, but I could not shake off the feeling that it could have been more intense, to have more animals here, but maybe its just me. I didn't end up loving insect, but I gained a new level of appreciation for them and that is just wonderful! Visited on a Saturday, July 2023....

We enjoyed the insectarium a lot. The Insectarium has 4 attractions: The Alcoves, Tete-a-Tete, The Dome and the Great Vivarium. They are laid out in a consecutive path. You first enter the Alcoves which is a cool set of rooms and hallways that are built to give you the perspective of a bee’s life inside their hive. After you enter Tete-a-Tete which is a room with 7 glass displays containing some interesting insects – you’ll have to have a good eye to find some of them. Next comes the Dome which is a larger room with an impressive 36 displays of insects color coded like a rainbow. And finally you enter the live butterfly conservatory. A butterfly even landed on one of our hats and hung out for a minute or two. It took us 35 minutes to leisurely enjoy the Insectarium.

The Insectarium is next to the Jardin Botanique. It is a separate ticket unless you buy the passport for all 5 “museums” (Jardin Botanique, Insectarium, Biosphere, Biodome and Planetarium). If you entered through the Botanical Garden, to enter the Insectarium, you need to exit the Garden (and show your tickets to re-enter). Then walk down to the building. Inside you can purchase tickets or scan your online purchased tickets. Admission costs C$22.75 adult, C$20.50 senior 65+, C$16.50 student 18+ with card, C$11.50 children 5 to 17y, C$62.75.25 family 2 adults 2-3 children. Children under 4y are free but you’ll need to get a ticket for them. When we purchased our tickets for the Botanical Garden, we also tried to buy tickets for the insectarium (same pricing as Jardin) but the sales rep indicated they were sold out and recommended that we head over to the Insectarium ticket booth to check. It was odd because upon hearing this we went online via cell phone and purchased 4 tickets for entrance half...

Loved this museum! Small but mightly. a group of workers greeted me at the door, they were incredibly friendly and helpful! Walking through this museum makes you feel like a small ant exploring a dark ant hill that is full of interactive and interesting exhibits. The main hall of this ant hill is a large domed room with walls covered in a large variety of bug showcases sorted by species, color, traits, and more! I thought some of the cases were really well thought out and put together such as the camouflage one where the bugs are placed with the nature they imitate. You need to download an app to learn about them. This would be fine if there were also plaques with info on them but there were none to be found, only two ipads (one at each entrance) where you could look up bugs by their case number. One star deducted for lack of readily available info in the physical bug exhibit (which in my opinion is the whole point of museums) but otherwise this place is great! The greenhouse which houses the live bug species is adorable! My favorite part was the ant bridge. Seeing them cut small pieces of flower petals and cary them along the log is so cute. If you are very quiet you can hear them chewing away at the hibiscus blossoms. Definitely do not skip this museum! It is about a 15 minute walk from the biodome uphill but it is 100% worth it. There is a room with live bugs which is spacious, the shape of the observation windows on these are really cool and lets you get an amazing view of the bugs inside. The blue stick bug was particularity amazing. Lots of little small spaces to climb around in. come here if you fantasize about...