The ANU Zoology Department placed a "wanted to buy" advertisement in The Canberra Times requesting live worms on this day 51 years ago.
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The advertisement read, "Kids, we will pay $2 per pound for live worms. Deliver 3 to 5pm Sun, Zoology Department, ANU".
About 25 children turned up at the department with 15lbs, about 15,000 worms gleaned from compost heaps all over Canberra.
The ANU zoologists said that it must have been a bad weekend. Similarly, years prior, the medical department received 220lbs.
The latest advertisement became necessary when zoologist, Mr Peter Temple-Smith, and an honours student decided to study the biology and ecology of the platypus at first hand.
Platypuses eat about half of their body weight, from 1 to 2lb, each day and the ANU larder was bare of their staple diet - worms. A worm farm was formed and would be kept during the study.
The department had a platypus but it had to be freed when it failed to thrive on a substitute diet.
Regardless of the Taronga Park Zoo's recommendation, university platypuses refused to eat custard. It's common garden worms, or nothing.
