Platypus

Back to Fauna Index

One of the two remains egg-laying mammals or monotremes in the world, the platypus. They are only found in Australia. Also know as duckbill by the early settlers, as it is easy to see why. Its bill is quite like a duck’s bill. It has webbed feet, too.

This fascinating animal inhabits freshwater rivers and lakes where it swims, feeds and dig burrows. Platypuses are found in the eastern coast of Australia from Cooktown, in the north Queensland, all the way south to Tasmania. They are rarely seen because they are very shy animals. They use their front feet as paddles as they swim about looking for food. Platypuses’ diet consists of worms, snails, yabbies and insects and grubs, which live in the river mud. Although they spend a lot of time in the water, platypuses cannot breathe underwater. It swims to the surface to breathe air though nostrils at the front of its bill. It can stay under water for 2 to 8 minutes, depending on how active it is.

Mother platypus lays between one and three eggs at the end of nesting burrow which can measure up to 18 metres long winding tunnel from the entrance above water level. There are often several entrances to the burrow

and are well hidden from predators by overhanging reeds, grass and bushes.

A mother platypus incubates her eggs by curling her body around them for about two weeks. When the babies hatch out, they are tiny and at once they start licking milk which secrete out of their mother’s pores on the belly. The baby platypuses stay in the burrow licking milk and growing for up to four months.

There were once many more platypuses than there are now. The platypus was killed for their beautiful furs. Now they are protected animals.

The average female platypus is smaller than the male, growing to about 430 millimetres long.

The average male platypus grows to about 5400 millimetres long. They have poison spurs on its hind legs. This poison is strong enough to kill small animals but not people. The platypus is one of the very few poisonous mammals.

The platypus usually feeds in the early hours of the morning and from late afternoon into the night. They lie in the sun at the entrance of their burrow or rest in the burrow.