Science of Survival is a class designed to ensure that students would know how to survive in a barren situation: being stranded in the desert, being lost in the mountains, being the only survivor in a zombie apocalypse.

Students spend the semester learning various ways to survive. “If you are not dying, you are surviving,”stated science teacher Gino Salvitti.

Recently, Salvitti charged them with learning to build an Arapuca bird trap.

“As we know from history,  for thousands of years Aboriginal People from all around the world developed their own technologies in order to survive. The native people of South America developed the Arapuca Bird Trap as a way to take advantage of wild birds as a food source,” Salvitti said.

Salvitti taught students about the trap, demonstrated how to create one,

and allowed the students two weeks to create one of

their own using natural materials such as sticks or binding such as string.

“It takes a lot of patience, and it theoretically works but just because it theoretically works doesn’t mean it will work when you do it. It took like four times to get my trigger system made properly so it would actually work,” said senior Susan Kelly.

On the due date, students set up their traps in the courtyard and tested them. Salvitti would trigger the trap in a similar fashion to small animal to see if the students’ had successfully created their projects.