Dare you take a seat in the dreaded Bug Snug and have a mystery insect or arachnid placed on your face? Famous faces get up close and personal with some of the world’s wildest and weirdest bugs!
Bugface
From Friday 18 September at 9pm (SIN/HK)
bbc-earth
Series previews
About the show
It’s time to infest your face!
Only the bravest join our resident zoologist Yussef Rafik for Bugface, where a host of creepy crawlies prowl and frolic over a host of famous faces.
It all starts with a relaxed chat in our Bug Snug, where Yussef uncovers their thoughts, fears, and often, misunderstandings about insects, all before we reveal the creepy crawly creature that will shortly be roaming around their face!
After signing one final disclaimer (and getting a proper safety briefing!), our guests are dipped back in the Bugface Recliner of Doom, and asked to clearly and precisely read a series of amazing facts about this episode’s bug. All while they have a little visitor - or many little visitors - scuttling, stalking or strutting over their faces!
If they’re manage it, the incredibly exclusive, much-coveted Bugface Mug can be theirs!
Will a close encounter of the many-legged kind change their feelings towards bugs? Will they get that amazing Bugface Mug? And most importantly of all, will they get pooped on?
Gallery
Facts
Typopeltis crucifer can release a chemical defence spray. The spray is concentrated acetic acid, or vinegar. Which is why its common name is the Vinegaroon!
Male crickets chirp by rubbing their front wings together. This is called “stridulation”. They stridulate more in hotter weather, so some people use them to judge the temperature!
Locusts - or Schistocerca gregaria - travel in huge swarms. Over 40 million can be packed into less than half a square mile, and they’ve been recorded travelling all the way from Africa to the Caribbean!
The Malayan Jungle Nymph is the largest stick insect in the world - the female can be 15cm long, and weigh 65g. Hard to balance on a face, but we managed it!
Presenter
Yussef Rafik
Yussef has been “a nature nerd” (his words!) his whole life. He first held a crocodile at the age of four, and spent many summer holidays in Morocco, where he used to chase dung beetles and hunt for scorpions!
He studied Zoology at university - working on subjects as diverse as leopard populations in South Africa, to the decline of urban hedgehogs in the UK - and went on to become a keeper at Bugtopia the Zoo.
His love of doing educational talks and handling sessions at the zoo led him to setup his popular Instagram channel, @thezoologyguy, where he specialised in hunting in local hedgerows and waterways, and showcasing his own impressive collection of animals - royal pythons, geckos and giant stick insects.
He's presented for The Wildlife Trust, alongside fronting Bugface.