Do I really have to go to Australia in order to see one? I checked here: http://app.isis.org/abstracts/abs.asp and the only zoos listed that have one are in Australia.
And if this really is true, then why? Are they particularly difficult to care for?
How close are you to the tri-state area?
They’re not especially difficult to care for, but they don’t live for very long and they don’t breed well in captivity. Australia generally won’t allow people to capture wild animals just so they can die in a cage for public entertainment. There’s no great difficulty obtaining capture permits if an institution wants to set up a bona fide captive breeding program, but since it’s difficult and unrewarding, it appears that no zoos outside the continent think it’s worth the effort. So with only handful captive bred individuals, and no wild caught exports permitted, they just ain’t around.
Appearances aside they are not at all cuddly. They are quite aggressive when handled and will sting the crap out of you with what is reputed to beone of the most painful stings on the planet.
This sitesays 12 years, which seems sufficient for a zoo. Does anyone know if their egg-laying biology contributes to them being difficult to breed in captivity?
Zoos must balance lots of variables to choose what species to exhibit. Not the least of them is availability. Blake has it right - modern zoos seldom collect specimens from the wild any more, unless there’s a critical need. Australia also has very restrictive animal export conditions. Most Australian animals in US zoos are descended from very small, old captive populations.
Just go to Australia, it’s a nice place. Tassie is apparently THE place to see them in the wild, but you might get lucky and see them on the mainland. They are very shy and nocturnal. Healesville Sanctuary in Melbourne has a very nice platypusery, and was the first facility to breed them in captivity.
Why so difficult to breed? Hard to say. Wild platys choose a mate, a nest site, their own diet… zoos try and replicate these preferences, but can’t give as many options to captive animals.
No you don’t.
You just wanna bust your little brothers.
I have a large TV hooked up to computer. With that and this Youtube video, I think my experience at home is close to what you can see at a zoo or aquarium minus the 1 day plane flight and the expense.
There are several other good Youtube videos like this one as well. I would love to go to Australia but a special trip to see a platypus may not be worth it.
Speaking of platypi…platypussies?..we hereby offer a potential solution to the difficulty of captive breeding;
I spent a couple of afternoons looking around for platypuses while in Cradle Mountain-Lake St Clair National Park in Tasmania. I never saw one, but I actually managed to see a Tasmanian Devil, which was pretty exciting. No, it wasn’t flying around in a whirlwind. I also saw a wombat, which was damn cute, but I don’t think they are particularly rare. They are also pretty slow, so they are easier to see.
Someone said that there was a small reservoir where it was pretty much guaranteed to see a platypus, but alas, I ran out of time and missed out.
They are quite hard to see, even in zoos. They are crepuscular and are only active for a few hours, very early morning and evening just as it gets dark. The rest of the time they are in their burrow. At the times when they are active the light is poor and they are dark and move very fast, and of course they are underwater much of the time.
There are some at a place in Brisbane which is pretty good. They have a glass side on the pond in the enclosure so you can see the platypus under water. They artificially change the light levels to change the little guys’ day around by so that they are active mid morning, when visitors are there.
I used to spend a lot of time sitting very, very quietly near a large pool in a creek near where I grew up to try to spot them and I could count on seeing a platypus maybe one time in four that I went there, but usually only as a dark shape swimming only just above water. I only saw them clearly in the wild there on maybe two occasions, once when one climbed out of the water and preened on a log near me and another time when two were splashing around in shallows. The truly wild ones are very shy. You have to be sitting unobtrusively in place before they come out for the evening, and then not move a muscle.
There are quite a few places where they can be seen reliably nowadays. They are very easy to spot at Eungella in North Queensland, and when I was up there they seemed quite used to people, not like the very wild ones I had so much trouble seeing when I was younger.
When I was a kid in the late 1950s, the Bronx Zoo had a couple of platypuses, Cecil and Penelope, in their specially-built platypusary. I remember being taken to see them when I was probably six or seven. I think I may have glimpsed a dark shape in the water but that’s about it. I remember it being big news when Penelope escaped. The platypusary stood for quite a few years after Cecil died in 1959, but the Zoo never got another platypus.
You know, before this thread, if someone said to me, “have you ever seen a platypus in real life?” I would have said “yeah of course! Haven’t you?”
Now… I’m not so sure! If I have, I can’t imagine for the life of me where I would have seen one.
Well that answers the question I was about to ask: What would you see at a zoo that had a platypus exhibit? They’re always described as reclusive. I guess I missed my chance at the Bronx Zoo. I was there no earlier than 1962. I’ve got a picture of me and my brother riding a llama. Or rather sitting in the carrier on it’s back, I don’t recall the animal ever going anywhere.
I was in Sydney in October and went to the Torango zoo. They had a good platypus exhibit. The video that Shagnasty linked too was a lot better than the view we had. The exhibit was a dark room, I would not be surprised if it was the same exhibit, and the platypus was swimming around farther back in the tank we watched for about 10 minutes but never got a really good view.
I’ve seen them fairly close up in the wild at a lake in Tasmania. The one we saw seemed curious and swam up to about 3 or 4 meters away from us several times. AFAIK they don’t have any real predators in Tasmania, so I guess they don’t have a reason to fear any larger animals.
There are roads all over the world where you can see a Truck Killed Flatty Puss.
I’ve seen just the one in the wild, near Queanbeyan NSW
You can go to the Smithsonian and see a taxidermied platypus.
I just want to say that learning the word “platypusery” has made my day.
Although, the image it brings to mind is of a small bakery that specializes in baking platypus into a flaky pastry.
