"Animal Grossology," an interactive and informative exhibit on some of the planet's stinky, slimy, icky and yucky critters, opens Saturday at Bishop Museum's Castle Memorial Building.

Talk about gross.

Be prepared to be alarmed — and educated — about the colors of animal and insect blood, belching frogs, and just about anything imaginable about poop. And eeew, see video of a real tapeworm that measures — gasp! — 60 feet long and — gasp again! — was found in a human.

"A lot of these things are pretty disgusting, but the way the exhibits are presented, it doesn't turn you off," said Hi'ilani Shibata, education specialist at Bishop Museum. "The educational messages are a pretty high-level; for instance, at the penguin ice house, I believe children will understand what carnivores and herbivores are. The exhibit takes some high-level concepts and brings it down to a level where youngsters will learn, in a fun way."

Indeed.

While adults will find some new lessons or revisit some old knowledge in "Animal Grossology," the display is geared to youngsters in second through eighth grade. It brings textbook facts to life and expands learning through a series of pit stops that cater to kids' fascination with the bizarre and, yep, gross stuff.

The exhibit is based on Sylvia Branzei's "Animal Grossology" book, part of a "Grossology" series, that sheds light in an arena most folks don't venture to: discussing the size of poop, how you can tell if the specimen came from a meat or plant eater, how and why dung sheds light on some scientific mysteries, what dung beetles do to help clean cow poop, how certain bugs are considered healthy to eat, why slime protects some species, and the spectrum of creature blood color. Like, did you know blood can be red, blue, yellow or white?

The exhibit is user-friendly, with games adding to the fun.

For instance, "The Slime Game" — with push-button choices of slimy, slimier and slimiest critter — assembles three contenders: Luke, the sea cucumber; Slomo, the snail; and Helga, the hagfish.

Lights flash and arrows move, giving the participant a sense of a "live" show. Accompanying video depicts characteristics of the slimy and the slippery, and surely, the hands-down winner has to be the hagfish, which burrows through dead fish in the ocean for food, serving as both a vacuum cleaner and garbage disposal to keep the seas free from decomposing yuckies.

The Blood Slurpers is presented like a flea circus attraction, complete with a tent and stage motif, with domes of faux specimens that "suck" blood.

For the weak of heart, fret not: Much of the grossness is implied, in video, in storyboard factoids, in voiceovers. Critters such as flies and dung beetles are portrayed as cartoon characters — the oversized fly looks like a creature from a sci-fi movie, with huge eyes and flapping wings; the dung beetles don boxing gloves for an interactive bout in which four visitors can participate.

Yes, there's a lot of poop, but none of it is real — except for the owl feces, which are actual specimens dried and preserved (and odorless in a plastic casing), depicting remnants of bird and rodent bones, indicating the owl's diet.

In an icy nook, a penguin is visibly upset about mounds large and small of various dung. The whole point of this mess, clearly, is to indicate how diet can be detected by what creatures leave behind. Thus, the samples represent carnivores (meat eaters), herbivores (plant eaters), omnivores (meat and plant eaters) and insectivores (insect eaters).

In style and scope, "Animal Grossology" is presented with the motif of a children's museum attraction, with bright colors, moving figures, and feely-touchy elements that kids adore.

For example, a chatty parrot welcomes visitors just inside the entrance of the exhibit.

A large octopus, the lone inflated creature in the show, sits atop a mini-submarine that houses portholes displaying video of invertebrates. There's also a crawl-through tube with the exit fashioned like a huge gaping mouth of an oversized fish.

Hands can explore a couple of boxes with differing textures — bumpy, spiny — with lift-up flaps providing the answers to the guessing game.

And you can also take a whiff at unknown odors and try to detect who or what is attached to the smell. Caution: One of the smell options is a skunk, a species not found in Hawai'i, happily, and yes, it stinks.