Richard Whitten's favorite piece of his collection is the birdwing butterfly of New Guinea. An exquisite and rare butterfly that's also “as big as your head.” But also found in Whitten's assortment of arthropods – insects, arachnids, centipedes and other types of creepy crawlers – are walking stick bugs and millipedes the size of one's forearm, beetles the size of a small bird and spiders that look like they could eat a small bird (for example, the aptly named “Goliath bird-eating spider”).

All these creatures – thousands of species – will be donated to the University of Costa Rica's biology department.

“I just grew up loving insects,” Whitten said. “It's a hobby that got out of hand.”

The one hundred boxes of mounted organisms, including scorpions, moths, cockroaches of all shapes and surprisingly gigantic sizes eventually will be housed in a new building on the UCR campus. The collection will rival some of the world's largest arthropod collections such as the ones found at the Smithsonian and the New York Museum of Natural History. Some of the more exotic creatures on display came from such far-away places as Ghana and Papua New Guinea.

Whitten and his wife, Margaret, lived in Monteverde, Costa Rica for 16 years, and he accumulated many bugs in his collection while living in the country. Whitten now lives in Idaho, and he had planned to donate the collection to a children's a museum in the United States. However, permit issues made that plan too hectic, so he decided the UCR was a better option.

The decision thrilled the UCR biology department. Close to 50 students and professors and hundreds of mounted bugs were packed into a classroom at the UCR on Tuesday to announce the donation. Whitten was floored by how crowded the room was for the presentation of the collection. But the university's staff understands the significance of receiving such a massive collection.

“The value is in principle,” said Hammer Salazar, who works at the Biological Reserve on UCR's campus. “The value doses not serve us in economical terms. The value is for the nature.”