8/30/2023 0 Comments Platypus in zoo![]() ![]() Last week, working carefully with small trowels under the eyes of 50 newspaper reporters and photographers, they dug into the dirt to bare Penelope's secret. At last they decided that they should wait no longer. The weather in The Bronx grew cold the fondly expectant curators grew worried. According to the schedule worked out in Australia, they should come into the outside world after 17 weeks. Her offspring were presumably demanding more and more milk. Huge quantities of worms and larvae disappeared into her duck bill. Penelope kept her own council, but she seemed to be eating for two or more. Then came long and anxious waiting while the presumed young platypuses passed through the nursing stage. All the signs pointed to platypus eggs, perhaps even hairless platypus infants wriggling in the nest.Įating for Two. The curators hovered around, smiling at one another like fond godfathers. She ate an enormous meal and popped back again. On July 9 Penelope retired to her burrow and did not appear again for six days. ![]() Since wild platypuses make their breeding nests out of just such leaves, the curators grew hopeful. When the curators provided her with eucalyptus leaves. Nothing overt was observed, but Penelope was no longer evasive and the two platypuses seemed to get along nicely. When she scratched timidly at the wooden barrier that separated her from Cecil, the curators happily lifted Cecil over the barrier. Penelope seemed to be in a more sociable mood. The same routine was repeated in the spring of 1952. ![]() Cecil seemed interested, but decided that he was not welcome. As soon as she saw him, she took evasive tactics, dashing into the water, rolling over and over and scratching furiously with all of her 20 sharp claws. On a warm spring day in 1951, they placed Cecil in Penelope's half of the platypusary. They both seemed happy in a proto-mammalian way, but the curators were ambitious for them. In summer each had an outdoor private swimming pool, and in winter they retired to an indoor platypusary.Įvasive Tactics. Penelope and Cecil were fed extravagantly on worms, insect larvae, frogs and water plants. But Penelope and Cecil, the male, seemed to adjust themselves gradually to the alien Bronx. When they got three live platypuses in 1947 (TIME, June 9, 1947), they devised elaborate plans for breeding the two females. But the Bronx curators were not discouraged. Only after several months do they frisk out of their burrow as furry platykittens.Įven in their native Australia, only one platypus couple (Jack and Jill) have bred in captivity, and they produced only one offspring. From the eggs hatch blind, hairless little "larvae" that nurse by licking milk from their mother's mammary pores. Their blood is warm and they have mammal-like fur, but they lay soft, reptile-type eggs about ¾ in. Platypus reproduction is a baffling business, for platypuses are not quite mammals. Sadly, Betty died of a cold, but Cecil and Penelope adjusted to their new home and there were hopes they would create a family there.įor six years the earnest curators of New York's Bronx Zoo have busied themselves with the delicate problem of platypus family life. On April 25th, 1947, David and Sigrid Fleay arrived at the Bronx Zoo with platypuses named Cecil, Penelope and Betty, who were accommodated in a new platypusary built to the Fleay's specifications. ![]()
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