reptile demonstrations

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Feeder Fish
MFK Member
Mar 7, 2006
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me and a friend of mine will be doing some educational reptile demos at the local grade school. i have given tours at the aquarium i work at and have shown my animals off to people that come to my house, but have never done it in front of a bunch of kids who i dont know. any tips? andy advice? anything at all? lol thanks in advance...

list of animals being displayed:
Sheltopusik
blue tongue skink
bearded dragon
madagascar roaches
african millepede
american bull frog
northern water snake
bull snake
milk snake
alligator snapper
common snapper
box turtle
probly more, if time permits
 
I would say prepare for a barage of questions kids are very curious and attentive when it comes to animals and reptiles. I sometimes take Titus my Burmese Python to a LPS and when I am there customers stick around. Kids always like to touch and ask questions...and the frequent "Can I hold it?" question too.

Good luck and thank you. You are doing some great things educating people about wildlife...
 
tankyou, I just love your picture, OMG its funny.:ROFL: :ROFL:

Anyways, bugs arnt realy a big hit with people. You will get alot of questions but as long as you inform them correctly, you may even be asked back in a few years. I dont realy think you will have enough time if you talk about every animal correctly. I had 4 animals including a bug and that took 1 hour! Crazy.
 
I agree with Ztrip. Only do your talk on 4-5 animals. Now you can have the others displayed but like Z said, you won't have time to discuss every single one. I suggest picking the really unusual ones to talk about. Everyone has probly seen beardies and box turtles. Maybe just one snake, one or 2 lizards, the frog and one turtle. My choices would be:

sheltopusik
blue-tongue skink
millipede
bullfrog
milksnake or bullsnake (whichever is more pettable)
probably the box turtle (unless one fo the snappers are trustworthy enough to be shown like that)
 
You can do a brief talk on each animal, but you'll find they'll have the questions for you. You may inspire some into herp keeping one day so you could outline basic requirements for husbandry (sorry i don't know how old "grade" school kids are). I'd take the biggest snake you've got, esp. if its handable. O i'd also take inverts too. Try curing some fears, and educating to get rid of any common rediculous misconceptions.
 
Bring one of the snappers, but only take it out if the kids start getting on your nerves really bad.
 
Ive brought my snake to the school here a couple of times. For the most part the kids just want to touch the animal, just be cautious because even mild tempered animals can get "spooked" when barraged by 15-20 hands at a time. ;)

When you doing this BTW?
 
A while back a friend and myself would take his 11' Burmese Python,among others, to classrooms (If I remember correctly, they were 3rd graders to 5th graders). Make a long story short, this was a VERY tame snake, and all we did was if anyone wanted to touch the snake, they could line up 1 at a time, and could not touch near the head either. Worked out pretty well! Definately give yourself time, everytime we did this, we ran over the time limit. Teachers did not mind though, kids really enjoyed the visits!!!
 
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