Australian Reptile Park launches new online educational initiative

The Australian Reptile Park has launched their new educational initiative, ‘Animal Tales with Tim Faulkner’ alongside daily live videos.

Since launching on Monday 30th March, the videos have amassed over 440,000 views. The Australian Reptile Park’s social media channels have also experienced unprecedented success with just their Facebook page alone growing over 50,000 likes in a matter of days.

While strict self-isolation protocols are now in place for the majority of Australia during COVID-19, many parents are working from home and home-schooling their children. Although the wildlife sanctuary on the Central Coast of New South Wales closed their doors on Wednesday 25th March 2020, keepers are still working to feed the animals and keep them safe and healthy.

The videos feature a homework task at the end, which children can complete and post it online for keepers and Tim Faulkner to see.

The Australian Reptile Park has also been going live daily at 2pm, with each video reaching a large audience. The videos so far reaching around 100,000 views, the most popular so far being Zookeeper Dan and Hugo the Galapagos tortoise reaching over 312,000 people. Parents are commending the park on the success of the videos and the engagement of the children.

Faulkner advises "the response from our educational videos and live videos has been absolutely incredible. We knew we had started something special when parents started flooding our comments with images of their kids drawing our animals and doing their daily homework.

"It's been such an extremely positive reaction from adults, families, teaches and children and we can't wait to keep going. We're not slowing down anytime soon, we're just getting started!"

The Australian Reptile Park and Tim Faulkner’s social media channels have been connecting people with wildlife for years with over two million followers across all platforms.

The videos will continue next week with the below schedules commencing Monday 6th April 2020:

Animal Tales with Tim Faulkner at 10am:

• Monday 6th April: Ella-Rose the Bettong

• Tuesday 7th April: Kangaroos

• Wednesday 8th April: Koalas

• Thursday 9th April: New Baby Introduction

• Friday 10th April: n/a (Good Friday)

Live streams on ARP at 2pm:

• Monday 6th April: Funnel web spider milking

• Tuesday 7th April: Snake venom milking program

• Wednesday 8th April: Elvis the crocodile – a past favourite

• Thursday 9th April: New Baby Introduction

• Friday 10th April: n/a (Good Friday)

Live streams on the Australian Reptile Park’s Facebook and Instagram pages.