A take is a container for animation in a scene. A take stores data about animation for objects. The transport controls (FBPlayerControl) act on the current take.

In the UI transport controls, the start and end of a take determine when the Timeline indicator starts and stops. You can get the current take with FBSystem::CurrentTake, as in the following Python snippet:

for myTake in FBSystem().Scene.Takes:
    print myTake.Name

To create a take and have it accessible in the Transport control you should use CopyTake (called Duplicate in the UI), as in this Python snippet:

newTake = FBSystem().CurrentTake.CopyTake("my new take name")