Tigerhomes - Educational Video

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News for the month of September 2002

Tigerhomes makes its 2nd Educational Video

Well, you're not going to believe it! Tigerhomes Sanctuary (THS) actually filmed its 2nd educational video. As stated in the July 2002 chronicle, THS has decided to put together a series of short educational films. Concentrating on the academic environment, we will provide a curriculum to assist teachers in their lesson plans.

I have barely gotten over the excitement of filming our first video, "Lemurs: Tails From The Canopy", when David, Nate and myself decided to film another. This time the focus of our lesson was going to be on Florida wildlife. Florida has some incredibly fascinating animals and we were excited to show them off to our viewers.

To do this we met up with a good friend of ours John Jones or "Otter John" as he is more commonly referred to. John owns and operates "Wild Florida Productions" specializing in native Florida wildlife. It was quite obvious that John was the perfect co-host for THS's next video. John is a true professional in the field of Animal Husbandry and behavior with a real passion to educate! His wildlife presentations are so renowned that he has been featured on Discovery Channel, Nigel's Wild Wild World, Deco Drive and numerous other TV and Radio shows.

Now I did say that John was called "Otter John", and this is for a good reason. John has a passion for otters and has a special gift when interacting with them. I personally have gone deep into the Everglades with John to go swimming with three of his orphaned otters in the wild. Not many people are aware of this, but baby otters need to learn how to swim and are actually terrified of deep water while young. John uses a special "Desensitization" technique to make this as stress free as possible. First the animals play in the sink, then the bathtub, then a shallow kiddie pool until slowly we are in the heart of the Everglades swimming amongst the alligators, snakes and fish. The otters are beyond words when trying to describe how graceful and maneuverable they are in water. On more then one occasion they out maneuvered and caught native Guar fish.

Now, back to the video. As mentioned earlier, we filmed a video on some of Florida's dynamic wildlife. It took us about five days of filming creating numerous hours of raw footage. We ended up filming with some of the most amazing animals, including Otters, Raccoons, Red Tailed Hawks, Alligators, Crocodiles, Eastern Diamondback Rattlesnakes, King Snakes, Tortoises / Turtles, Skunks and some amazing Panther cubs. You will learn in the video that Cougars, Panthers, Mt. Lions, Pumas, and Catamounts are all the same cat. Of all the different cat species the Cougar has one of the largest geographical range. The different names apply to the region they are indigenous to. For example, they are called Florida Panthers in Florida and Pumas in South America. This film is loaded with fact after fact of information not often encountered in mainstream documentaries while at the same time geared to the school system. We are very proud of it and hope it will help influence younger children on the importance of protecting wild animals and wild places.

I would like to thank John Jones for his involvement and expertise in assisting THS's latest educational video on Florida wildlife. For those of you interested in learning more about otters and other Florida wildlife (or possibly a live in person meeting with John and his animals), visit www.otterman.net. As always, keep an eye out on the cameras and the ever changing lives of the Sanctuary's residents.

Remember, there are many ways to help the cause. Here are a few.

1) Tell everyone you know about the website. By increasing the number of visitors, we increase the awareness of the danger these wonderful creatures face.
2) If you have a website, link to us - http://www.tigerhomes.org/
3) Submit our site http://www.tigerhomes.org/ to any webcam sites you may visit.
4) Make a donation to the sanctuary. There is an area on the gift shop for those who want to contribute.
5) Purchase items from the gift shop. They make great gifts and are for a worthy cause.
6) Adopt a pet. It's a great way to virtually own one of the sanctuary animals.

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Remember, our main mission is to spread an interest in saving wild animals and wild places but we can't do it alone.

Story by: Jason and David