School visit with newts

[AuSu]

My daughter had possibility to introduce newts today at school. I went there with her, having two c.pyrrhogaster and one h.orientalis (and three terrestial youngsters) with us. The weather was ok to do this, mild with plus degrees and shelter with styrox box, woollen thick cover and only a five minute drive. We had the newts in separate plastic, clear boxes with some moss so they had something to hide but still easy to see.
Children (age ten to eleven years) were really fascinated with the newts and had lots of questions. Newts seem to be quite unfamiliar and usually mixed with lizards. We have only two lizard species and two newt species in Finland, and the first impression children had was that lizard (another species doesn't have limbs).
I think it was a good chance to give information about fire-bellies and caudata altogether. I hope when there is more facts, people can understand and see the value of these animals, too, both as pets (even if it's a small, cheap creature it still has the right to live as good and long life as one can afford them in captivity) and as an important part of nature!

 

[Stupot1610]

I think it's a great idea! My biology teacher keeps a couple of caudata species (I gave them to him).

 

[Tw1st3dR0s3]

I take my tiger sals to school events quite often for educational purposes. The kids always seem to enjoy them. One of my tigers tried to "lunge" out of my hands after a kid, and after I put her back into her enclosure, she spent the rest of the talk pressed up against the glass closest to me begging for food.

We've actually got a really big event coming up for the public in less than two months. If anyone has an idea of how to incorporate a Wizard of Oz theme into an amphibian display, let me know. We're adding my amphibians into our aquatic animals display room, so we'll have a bunch of fish there as well (we are taking precautions to minimize stress in our displays). I'll probably design some sort of tri-fold display with educational information, and of course, I'll have a few of my different salamanders/newts (minus the tigers which will be a part of an educational show).