TUATARA EGGS HATCHED

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27426, 12 August 1954, Page 8

TUATARA EGGS HATCHED

WELLINGTON ZOOLOGIST’S

SUCCESS "The PTeas” Special Service WELLINGTON, August 10. Tuatara lizards have been hatched at Victoria University College, Wellington, says “Science News.’ T one of the Penguin series published in London. They were hatched from a nest 'of 14 eggs collected noy a lecturer in zoology/Mr W. H. I. Dawbin. Mr Dawbin obtained the eggs from Stephen’s Island in Cook Strait. Other tuataras, says the publication, have been hatched in captivity, but none before has survived for more than a few weeks. The eggs, round, drab-whlte and about the size of a table tennis ball, were carried to Wellington in a jar of earth. Fourteen months passed before any sjgn of life was shown and a young tuatara sawed its way out with a sharp-pointed “cutter” on its snout. The whole process of hatching took about 10 hours. The second egg hatched out two months later. The young reptiles have fed steadily on wood-lice, worms, small snails and slugs, except during annual hibernations of about three months. Although for the most part solitary, they have been seen playing together in the afternoon, jumping alternately from the bank of earth in their glass container.