Education Center - Meet the Animals

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Education Center - Meet the Animals

TigerHomes.org (TH) strives to offer a multilevel educational platform promoting an interest in wildlife and its protection. Tigerhomes.org Education Center has been setup to provide you with a resource to explore endangered and exotic animals within the many habitats here at the Sanctuary. The educational information in our "Power Cats: Locked and Loaded" animal DVD provides an overview of the Sanctuary's resident cats. David and Jason introduce to us the Sanctuary's "Power Cats". We meet an Princess - an African Lioness, Gypsy - a female Siberian Tiger, and Tundra and Loki - the Sanctuary's White Siberian Tigers, and also Kenya and Zaire - a pair of African Caracals. All the animals are featured within their natural habitats at the TigerHomes Sanctuary where they are provided with daily care and feeding, the best in veterinary care and natural enrichment habitats.

One of the most touching scenes in our film, for children especially, is the chance for them to view a home video of Loki, an extremely rare White Siberian Tiger, when he was first brought onboard as a 15 pound baby tiger abandoned by his mother and in need of a good home. This segment highlights proper rearing and handling procedures for baby tigers, which look very cute and cuddly but grow up to be 600-700 pound predators with all the instincts of their wild counterparts. Jason's golden retriever, Cody acts as part time surrogate mother and chew toy for the youngster. With the help of Zaire, an African Caracal featured in the DVD, they help rear the youngster until he is ready to be placed in his permanent home at the Sanctuary. The film makes it clear and emphasizes this very important point - these animals are NOT PETS just in case any teachers or students decide they would like to bring a baby tiger home!!

The DVD film takes us to visit our neighboring facilities, Florida Wild Productions with our co-host, John Jones introducing us to Maximus, his resident Florida Panther and Lennin, his Siberian Lynx. We then journey to the Miami Metro Zoo to meet Jenny Wadsworth who introduces us to their resident Cheetah, Savannah and to King George, Miami Metro Zoo's extremely rare King Cheetah that are both part of their very popular Cheetah Ambassador Program. Through this program the handlers actually take the animals directly into the Miami Dade school system. This affords children from all walks of life, including underprivileged children who may not have an opportunity to go to a zoo, a chance to see the animals up close and personal in order to teach them about the species and the importance of global conservation for the benefit of the animals and all of mankind.

Students may wish to view many excellent photographs from the professional stills taken of the Sanctuary resident exotic cats and look in our Viewer Gallery for the live cam snapshots posted by our members. Students are invited to view our 36+ webcams in seven naturalistic habitats featuring the "Power Cats" and 3 species of Lemurs that live in captivity at the TigerHomes Sanctuary. Lemurs are prosimian primates native to Madagascar which are also extremely endangered with the threat of extinction. Our webcams are a great interactive educational tool as the students can actually take their own snapshots of the animals to share with the classroom or enter into a classroom animal photo contest!! Students are invited upload their animal snapshots into our own TigerHomes' Viewer Gallery.

Educators may choose to introduce students to these and many other animals of interest residing at the TigerHomes Sanctuary and neighboring facilities including an African Leopard, African Bush Babies, Red Footed Tortoise, Madagascar Flat Tailed Tortoise, African Sulcata Tortoise, Florida Panther (aka North American Cougar), American River Otters and Crocodile Monitor lizards. We also have educational animal pictures and animal bios on Panda Bears, Red Panda Bears, Polar Bears, Koala Bears, Grizzly Bears, Harp Seals, and Snow Leopards, Beluga Whales, Humpback Whales, Dolphins etc. available through our coverage in our animal index pages. Many other rare and exotic animals are featured in our "Meet the Rest of the Family" section of our website. Students may also hear the vocalizations of many of the "Power Cats" and Lemurs by exploring the Educational Center in our website. Our educational website is an excellent platform for teachers to help students become proficient in website navigation and to use the internet as a fun and interesting interactive educational tool.

Each animal profile page is presented in a friendly yet very informative way and includes an animal picture of the featured species. Students are given data as to size, habits, life cycle, reproduction, diet, predators, social structure, territory and geographical range of existence, wild and captive populations along with the current conservational status of each animal.

Basic introduction is made to the many conservation organizations and captive breeding programs in existence today. Students learn about CITES, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species which is a consortium of over 166 nations today acting together to implement and enforce the legislation necessary to preserve and protect these animals from becoming extinct in the wild. We also learn about the value of captive breeding programs and efforts that are being made to preserve genetically sound, healthy animals in captivity.

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