Spidey sense: Learners get up close and personal with a Mexican Redknee tarantula - quite harmless, despite its fearful facade - on the arm of zoology's Andrea Plos.

Most people would shrink at the prospect of meeting a squirming, squealing bat or a Mexican Redknee tarantula. Forged of sturdier stuff, obviously, were the 100-plus grade-two learners from the Factreton and Sun Valley Primary Schools who visited UCT's Department of Zoology in June for the annual tour - this year themed Bats and Spiders and part of an outreach arrangement between the UCT department and the schools. Keeping their fear reflexes in check, they oohed and aahed, and then stroked, poked and went eyeball-to-eyeball with the Cape long-fingered bat (who clearly didn't like the attention) and that oh-too-calm tarantula. But the learners had to settle for peering through glass at the spider's more venomous South American cousins.