At Philly Bug Fest 2022, humans learn to love the bug. And who knew a roach had two brains?

The oval-shaped Madagascar cockroach climbed up Josh Kulak’s index finger as he spoke, hissing like a snake and scuttling out of his hand as if it had somewhere else to be.

“This one is having a day,” said Kulak, a volunteer at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University, “so I’m going to put it down.”

Anyway, what was he saying? Ah, yes. Did you know a cockroach has two brains? One in its head, one in its abdomen.

“They can live and reproduce for multiple days without a head,” Kulak said.

If they’re into that sort of thing.

Kulak was fielding questions Saturday morning at the 15th annual Bug Fest, where you’re guaranteed to be bombarded with so many cool insect facts that you’ll wish you had a second brain to store them all. There are bug walks with Academy entomologists, workshops for children, and, of course, the famous Roach Races.

This year, Kulak brought his personal collection of giant beetles. They appeared to be sporting some sort of military-grade armor manufactured by nightmares.

But, here’s the thing: Not only are most insects not harmful to humans; without them, the world as we know it wouldn’t exist.

“They get an incredibly bad rap,” Kulak said of roaches in particular. The Madagascar hissing cockroach, for instance, is essential to maintaining tropical rain forest floors by eating rotting matter.

In the next room over, Martin Heyworth was holding court beside a collection of water bugs, describing the behaviors of scavenger beetles, predaceous diving beetles, and whirligigs.

Heyworth, a retired physician and a composer, acknowledged that many bugs have an inherent “creepiness factor.” People just want to squish them. He attributes that, in part, to a lack of childhood exposure to insects.

“I typically celebrate finding an insect,” Heyworth said.

For those who are bug averse, he proposed drawing such people in with aesthetically pleasing butterflies before getting into hairy tarantulas. Skip the hissing cockroaches for now.

“I don’t know anyone who would be put off by that beautiful blue swallowtail,” Heyworth recommended, gesturing over to a large butterfly.

Kourtney Gush, a writer from New Jersey, said she used to be terrified of insects. But then she came to Bug Fest a few years ago and accepted a challenge.

“I had to face my fear,” she said. “I put my hand in a bucket of maggots.”

Then, she ate some fried dragonflies. Fear conquered.

Gush is now fascinated by the critters. She brought her fiancee, Nicole Rios, to the Academy of Natural Sciences on Saturday to get her acclimated to insects, too. Rios wasn’t quite over the hump yet.

“Yeahhhhhhh,” Rios said, a little apprehensively. “I kind of have a phobia? Of them crawling all over me. Some of them are really interesting, though.”

Upstairs, a woman was showing her millipede — “Mikey,” a Philly native — to enraptured children, while a Drexel environmental science student displayed dozens of species of bees she collected this summer at the John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge. Not just the honeybees and bumblebees we all know, but bees of various hues — green sweat bees, reddish nomadic bees, bluish carpenter bees.

Jon Gelhaus, a Drexel entomologist, said bringing children to Bug Fest and teaching them about insects can have far-reaching benefits for them — and maybe the parents, too.

“If you can teach your child to be curious first before killing something first, that’s bringing out the curiosity which is needed for science and for thinking critically,” he said.

Many adults, he said, should reconsider their relationships with bugs, and their tendency to view them as “dangerous or dirty.”

“Just breathe. Look at it. See what it’s doing. You can just let it go and appreciate it,” Gelhaus said. “If you can walk out in your garden and not only enjoy the flowers but enjoy the other organisms, it adds so much to your life. It can be very wonderful for even your mental health.”

Heyworth, the beetle expert, offered a reminder.

“Humans,” he said, “are one species among millions.”

Bug Fest continues Sunday morning. Tickets are available online. Members of the Academy of Natural Sciences are admitted with their membership cards.