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Bronx Zoo Keepers Have Much Trouble NEW YORK. (NEA) — Is your girl a finicky eater? Take your troubles to the Bronx zoo. You'll get plenty of sympathy. They have a girl—Penelope is her name — who’s so fussy about her food that they've finally had to turn the lion house at the zoo into the biggest worm breeding farm in the world. .. Penelope is a platypus, a small duck-billed animal from Aus tralia who insists on 14,000 worms a month to stay alive and happy. And not just any old worm, ei ther. Three years ago, when the zoo got word that Penelope and two relatives were on their way from Australia, Christopher Coates was assigned as curator in charge of the platypuses. “We started looking for worms, but the earthworm farms couldn't supply enough to meet the needs of the duckbills. Our initial order for worms was 25,000. Months later we received 3596,” Coates says. So Coates and Keeper Thomas Callahan took up farming in the dark basement of the lion house. After several months of digging and breeding, they figured they had a pretty good supply of worms. They did, if they wanted to go fishing. But not if they expected to satisfy Penelope and her two companions. The crop from Coates’ farm was the common earthworm, and Penelope ‘wasn’t having any. While Penelope went on a hun ger strike, zoo workers went worm hunting all over Bronx park and neighboring parks. They dangled thin worms, fat worms, short worms and long worms un der Penelope’s nose, and she re acted like a child sniffing spinach. Finally they turned up a nice fat specimen in a pile of decayed leaves. Penelope fairly snapped at it, Coates promptly tagged it the leafworm and filled his farm with leafworm eggs. Today they’re be ing cultivated like prize dahlias. Callahan harvests two pounds a day, which is anywhere from 250 to 2000 worms, depending on size and weight. In his spare time, he also dishes up egg custard, crayfish and frogs for Penelope and friends. But he doesn’t use Penelope’s dinner to go fishing.
Newspaper Details
Pulaski Southwest Times
Pulaski, Virginia, US
Thu, Mar 09, 1950
Page 7
Full Page
Clipped by
Darcy P.
USA 07 May 2026
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