Catalyst goes to the Taronga Zoo for this fascinating story about an extremely rare event – the breeding of twin platypuses in captivity. This is only the 4th successful captive breeding in the world, so finding out what exactly went right is of great importance to animal behaviourists and zookeepers. It seems the zoo staff are the real hero’s of this story. Some of them only slept 4 to 5 hours a day for a month, observing and data collecting, all to learn how to recreate the platypuses natural habitat within their captive environment. It’s paid off, the zoo was able to created a platypus exhibit almost identical to the animals natural habitat. But, breeding in captivity is so unusual, that for the first two months the volunteer observers didn’t even know they had twins. The female platypus was a bit of a novice as well, she didn’t teach her young ones how to access their burrow, so the zoo keepers had to do for her by hand.


Background:
Platypus are shy and reclusive animals and have only been bred in captivity four times over the last 60 years. The most recent success occurred at Taronga Zoo where twin puggles were hatched not in a traditional tank, but in a natural habitat at the 75m Wollemi exhibit.

David Fleay was first successful in 1943 at the Healseville Sanctuary in Victoria. Healseville repeated its success in 1998 and in 2000 in a similar tank environment. Over the years, both organizations have shared their data and knowledge of platypus behaviour in captivity.

Platypus are one of only three egg-laying mammals and after mating, the female retires into a burrow to lay and hatch the egg and suckle the puggle (young Platypus) for about three months before it emerges.

TRANSCRIPT

Narration:
Here at Taronga Zoo they’ve been trying to solve the mystery of how platypus reproduce for 20 years. So far, without success. At stake is the survival of one of the world’s strangest species.

Margaret:
They are a vulnerable species in the wild. …//… so it is really important that we can breed in captivity so we can come to the rescue of the species if we need to.

Narration:
A few years ago, Margaret Hawkins a Behavioural Biologist, and Adam Battaglia, the Platypus keeper, teamed up to try and breed them again.
Surprisingly little is known about how platypuses breed. That’s because they live a secret life, hiding in burrows most of the day and feeding underwater much of the night. This lifestyle makes them one of the most difficult of all animals to study.

Margaret:
They’re so cryptic. They’re so secretive and there’s so little known about them. You’d think after all these years of study there’s really so little that’s known about them particularly their behaviour.

Narration:
Part of the problem with breeding them at Taronga may have been this exhibit. The Platypus house was state of the art when it was opened in the 70’s and it’s still a great way for people to see these reclusive creatures.
Above the public viewing tank there’s a network of tunnels, private pools and earth burrows.

Adam:
People walk around the tank below us, and they have no idea there is such a complex network on top.

Narration:
Over the years there has been mating in the display tank but it’s never led to babies. The team now thinks that the environment of this exhibit isn’t right for breeding.

Adam:
The drawbacks are it’s cut off from any environmental stimuli that we have outside and it’s a control situation so we need to predict what nature is specifying for this beast and that’s incredibly hard to do.”

Narration:
When Margaret and Adam suggested platypuses for the Wollomi– the Zoo’s showcase environment exhibit, there were doubters.

Margaret:
Most of the zoo people told us we were mad. They told us that you’d never see them and you have to be lucky to see them but again a visitor who sees a platypus here gets that same sort of thrill that you get when you see one in the wild.

Narration:
The theory was that a safe, natural environment would be more likely to lead to reproduction.

Adam:
One of the key features though was the running waterfall. Now a waterfall not only creates noise but it also breaks up the water’s surface which obviously reflects the light so the platypus can live in this particular area and feel completely at home not knowing people are standing on the bridge a few centimetres away looking over the top.

Narration:
It was now up to a male named Abbey and two females -Mary-Ann and Tarana to put the theory to the test.
But there would be no chance of a secret romance. The team installed a six-camera surveillance system to monitor the platypuses’ behaviour 24 hours a day.
Their planning and hard work paid off when the pools started to heat up. Margaret was there with her video camera to catch the amazing event. She videoed Abbey mating with both females.
Her remarkable video is one of the first times that platypus mating has been recorded.

After mating, Mary-Ann began digging a burrow. But despite all the locations provided by the team she chose a totally unexpected spot. One they didn’t even think she could get to-3 metres up a cliff.

Margaret:
She built her burrow right up above the tree fern over the cliff there [inaudible]

Karina:
It’s a long way up.

Margaret:
It is an enormous long way up.

Narration:
And she kept coming up with surprises, for example in her choice of nesting material.

Adam:
It was very interesting to see what she collected because it was very different from the research we had found before she preferred species such as stringy bark and tussock grass.

Narration:
Here she’s stripping the bark from a fallen log for her nesting material.

Adam:
And the way she collected them was completely unbelievable. She grabs them puts them in her tail and folds them underneath her tail. And continues on her journey. We estimate that the soaked nesting material weighed about half her body weight which is incredible and she carried that for quite a while and up a sheer rock face and up a tree fern and then back to the burrow.”

Narration:
For three days Maryanne travelled backwards and forwards on her exhausting mission – stopping only to sleep.
Then Maryane suddenly disappeared from the pools and waterfalls. Could she have laid an egg? Four days later, she re-emerged to feed much more than normal. The team hoped she was suckling her baby.
An anxious 4 month wait followed…
Finally in Feb the moment they’d been waiting for.
After 20 years, this was Taronga’s first captive bred platypus!

Margaret:
It was amazing. It was absolutely amazing… we had a look it was a platypus we had never seen before and all hell broke loose.

Narration:
But celebrations were cut short. The pup was too weak to climb the perilous trail back to it’s burrow. It could die if it was stranded away from it’s mother.
The team went on a 24-hour vigil. They had to shepherd and even carry the pup back to the pool in front of its burrow.

Margaret:
It was totally exhausting. We were getting very little sleep and setting our alarms for 3 o’clock in the morning and that sort of thing but we were all so really hyped up about it because we were so excited by the whole thing.

Narration:
Eventually things calmed down but it was then that Maryanne had one final surprise in store for them. One day Margaret’s videos captured a platypus she couldn’t recognise.

Margaret:
I kept going back to that particular bit of video the first juvenile was down in the pool, the mother was in the burrow but this platypus didn’t look like the mother and didn’t act like the mother so I kept thinking to myself is it, is it Mary Ann or is it another one.

Narration:
After searching the whole exhibit, it dawned on Margaret that Mary-Ann had two babies – not one. She was the mother of twin girls!
And as the twins thrive in their new pond the team think they’re close to finally cracking the puzzle of platypus breeding.

Adam:
I think we’ve put a few very big pieces of the puzzle together. We’ve just got a few more to go but with a foundation like this, the sky’s the limit.

Narration:
For Adam, the proof will come in the next few years when the team hope to repeat their success.

Related Info

Taronga Zoo

Healesville platypus breeding

Warrawong Sanctuary platypus breeding

Story Contacts

Adam Battaglia, Zookeeper

Michelle Britton, Media Relations  

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