The Birch Aquarium got a new addition this week with the hatching of at least one of their baby nautilus eggs. While it isn’t rare for Nautilus to lay eggs in aquaria, often times they have been thrown out because it was thought that they failed to hatch. What has come to light more recently is that nautilus take a really long time to hatch, as much as a year to develop!
Without any objects in the picture of this baby nautilus it is hard to gauge its size but having seen Nauti-eggs once before, we presume that this Nautilus pompilius is in the 1/2 inch (1.5cm) neighborhood. We’ve seen plenty of Nautilus before but a display of baby Nautilus would be something special, let’s hope the Birch Aquarium has continued success hatching and rearing them so that captive bred Nautilus can one day become a reality.
