Reptiles are amazing creatures. It’s unfortunate that sometimes they have a bad reputation. You need to be respectful of them, just like any other animal, but mostly they are perfectly content to spend most of their time just hanging out, relaxing, and eating when they’re hungry. At our Reptile Day event at the Museum, lots of reptiles came out to meet our visitors, and we even had prizes for visitors who registered their pet reptile friends in contests! Special guests on hand at the event included Gator Boys Chris and Ashley from Animal Planet, and Chef Kat Duran, who gave a cooking demonstration on how to eat like a reptile. There was a live venomous snake handling show by Venom One (Miami’s Snakebite Response Team), a live python presentation by a Museum herpetologist, an airboat display by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, and a presentation on invasive reptile detection and training by the Everglades Cooperative Invasive Species Management Area (ECISMA). We had crafts, activities, and demonstrations all throughout the Museum, like a chameleon camouflage challenge, sea turtle bingo, reptile scavenger hunt, and a lizard personality quiz. Even the turtles got in on the excitement of the day by having a race for our visitors!

Reptile Day is sponsored in part by Venom One, ECISMA, Gatorama, MSM Collections, Zoo Med, GEICO, Tom Crutchfield, and United Pet Group, Inc. For more information about sponsorship opportunities, contact Donald Uricchio at duricchio@miamisci.org.

Just a baby!

Eat like a reptile

Just hanging out

Someone just like you

A new friend

Everyone with new friends!

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Herpetologically inclined visitors flocked to the Museum on Saturday, November 5^th for Reptile Day. Reptile lovers and those who simply wanted to learn more about the fascinating creatures spent the day seeing, touching and experiencing several different lizard, snake, turtle and tortoise species, while the reptiles’ enthusiastic owners shared details about their pets.

“I like it better than Lizard Day because it has more animals and turtles!”  said Nicholas Nunez, Junior Herpetologist winner.

Merging two of the Museum’s most popular events, Snake Day and Lizard Day, Reptile Day included entertaining and interactive activities about many different reptile species. New to the event this year was the Turtle and Tortoise category.

“I think it was really cool to see all the other reptiles,” said visitor Kayla.

The pet reptile competition gave pet owners a chance to show off their scaly sidekicks, and compete for awards such as: Best of Show, Most Unusual, People’s Pick and Junior Herpetologist.

Guests got to meet and greet the stars of Swamp Wars on Animal Planet and also participated in a reptile trivia contest, live demonstrations, face painting, build-a-snake or lizard activity, snake personality quiz, and a sampling of “Insect Cuisine” prepared by a professional chef.

Reptile Day was sponsored in part by GEICO, Tom Crutchfield, Zoo Med, and United Pet Group, Inc.