The Insectarium and Butterfly Pavilion offers the Invertebrate Public Handling and Husbandry Certification to promote educated and safe interactions between the invertebrate and the candidate desiring to care for it. The candidate will go through a series of training sessions to ensure that they are not only able to safely handle any of our invertebrates but also know how to properly care for them. This includes but is not limited to learning how to build the invertebrate’s enclosure and what materials to use, understanding its diet and sleeping habits, and recognizing when the invertebrate is in good health or not. They will also be able to educate the public using the extensive they will have acquired from our educators.

The training will be composed of two parts with the first being learning to handle and care for our harmless species and the second learning how to handle dangerous species. The latter portion will require an additional training session than the first. The training begins by learning how to pick up and hold the invertebrate for a certain length of time. Once the candidate is comfortable with this they will learn how to hand the invertebrate to another person or group of people. They will learn how to discern between someone who is confident compared to someone who is nervous and know how to go about handling the invertebrate in both cases. Perhaps most importantly the candidate will learn how to identify when an invertebrate of a dangerous species is in an aggravated state and what the protocol is especially when handling with the public.