Vegetarian Shark?

Florence the six-foot tropical nurse shark has confounded her keepers at the National Sea Life Centre in Birmingham by refusing to eat fish, instead preferring salad and vegetables.

The displays team at the Centre have told Heart that they are resorting to devious tactics to make sure she gets the protein she needs.

"We're having to hide pieces of fish inside celery sticks, hollowed out cucumbers and between the leaves of lettuces to get her to eat them," said curator Graham Burrows. "And it has to be well hidden, because if she realises it?s there she?ll ignore the offering and wait for the strictly vegetarian option."

Florence's mouth is filled with razor-sharp, serrated teeth designed for demolishing fish and crustaceans Instead she uses them for pulping broccoli and cabbage and any other greens she can steal from fellow ocean tank resident Molokai the green turtle.

"Nurse sharks do occasionally graze on algae in the wild, and we weren?t surprised when Forence first stole some of Molokai's greens," said Graham. "We just weren't expecting her to go completely veggie. We wouldn't want her to be an embarrassment to the other flesh-eating hammerheads and black-tipped reef sharks in the ocean tank."