DIAMOND-BACK TERRAPIN CULTURE 
47 
A small percentage of the terrapins placed in the brooder house begin to take 
food almost immediately, others will not eat for several weeks, and still others 
apparently never eat. Those that start to feed first also begin to grow earlier than 
the others. In general, very little growth is made, however, prior to the month of 
December. The animals that do not appear to feed at all for a long period of time 
become more and more sluggish, they become emaciated, and the shells gradually 
soften, causing what is described as “soft shell” under another section of this report. 
The death rate from this source, as shown elsewhere, has been heavy. It is remark - 
Figure 3. — Rate of growth of two lots of terrapins of the brood of 1912. Line S represents a lot that was selected at about 
1 year of age as the largest, and line R represents a lot selected at the same time as the smallest (runtiest) in the whole 
brood 
able, however, that some of these animals that appear to have subsisted for months 
upon food stored within their bodies or, as it were, upon their own substance, until 
they are pitiful objects, may suddenly take food and thereafter make rapid growth 
and become strong and healthy animals. Elsewhere in this report (p. 40) it is 
shown that of 200 such animals selected during the latter part of May, 1927, which 
had never gained growth and which, so far as known, had never taken food although 
it had been supplied almost daily, 74 recovered without providing a change in food or 
in the environment in which they were living. Animals that have once fed occasionally 
