Bug Bowl: UC Davis takes first place in annual Entomology Games
DAVIS — A celebration is underway at UC Davis with students bringing home a national championship title. It's not for football or basketball. It's for the bug bowl.
The university has long been known for having one of the top insect research programs in the nation. UC Davis students have come in first place for lots of things, but this?
"I'm not going to lie, I'm kind of stoked," said Madi Hendrick with the university's entomology team.
The team nabbed first place in the annual Entomology Games held this year in Vancouver, Canada.
"Most of my friends call it the bug bowl," Hendrick said.
Hendrick is a doctoral candidate at UC Davis and one of four members of the Aggro Aggies team.
"It is a big deal for the entomology department," Hendrick said.
The game is a college-bowl-style quiz match among university students with around 7,000 competitors from across the country.
"So it is kind of surreal to think that out of all 7,000 of those, there are four people from UC Davis who are national champions at being bug nerds," Hendrick said.
Teams are questioned on a wide variety of insect topics, including physiology, toxicology and pest management.
"The difficulty of the questions differs a great deal within a match," said Zachary Griebenow of the university's entomology team.
The final match was as tight as a bug in a rug, but in the end, Davis defeated Alabama's Auburn University to take the top prize.
"It was very competitive," Griebenow said. "Auburn were excellent opponents and they quite nearly beat us."
The research these students normally do is serious, from protecting our local crops from insect infestation to studying the transmission of deadly diseases.
But the bug bowl gives them a chance to have a little break from the science lab.
"It's actually just so much fun," Hendrick said. "It's mostly hanging out with friends and talking about bugs."
By the way, this isn't UC Davis' first win in this contest. They took home back-to-back national titles in 2015 and 2016.