Reptiles
Semester 1 & 2
This elective is centered around working safely with live animals in class. You will have the opportunity to work within each of our animal groups through the semester, rotating through: Snakes, Skinks, Dragons, Monitors, Amphibians, Insects and Arachnids.
While working within your animal group, you will then learn the necessary skills to care for them and to keep them healthy and happy. This involves feeding, health checks, providing enrichment, enclosure set-up and maintenance and much more.
To help you, there are experienced students who have already cared for the animals before. They will happily teach you the fine art of taking a snake out of its enclosure. You may want to become a snake specialist: someone who can handle JP (our jumpy Jungle Python) and knows how to tell Sid from Boston (a Woma python and a Carpet python) or just how to hold the enormous Keyi - one of our largest carpet pythons. There are many skills to learn and we always need to be able to do them with care and consideration of the animals.
As well as working with the animals, you will take on personal or group projects during class time. Projects are very flexible and in the past have included:
Building a snake enclosure;
Creating photo displays of our animals;
Organising excursions for the class;
Raising money for endangered species;
Being interviewed for television by the host of Pets Practice; and
Getting the local paper out to raise community awareness of an endangered species.
What will you think of that you can add to this list?
See what all Animals electives get up to on TC Animals Instagram! Templestowe College Animals (@tc_animals) • Instagram photos and videos
