Have Platypuses, Will Travel

"The platypus is the most touchy, temperamental, unpredictable animal," says Australia's David Fleay, and he should know. Called "the platypus man," Fleay is the world's leading authority on one of the world's strangest animals, and the only man who has ever made the furry, duckbilled, egg-laying protomammals breed in captivity. Last week Fleay was grooming two juvenile platypuses for shipment to New York's Bronx Zoo, and he hoped that they would travel by air.

When he took three of them to New York by sea in 1947, says Fleay, "it was one of the most trying times I have ever been through." He had chronic dyspepsia for a year "due to those blasted platypuses."

Adult platypuses are set in their ways, so Fleay decided to catch young ones and condition them to human company before committing them to The Bronx. During the breeding season, female platypuses dig long tunnels into the banks of Australian streams, and lay their soft eggs in leaf-lined chambers at the ends. When the young platypuses hatch, they grow fast and fat by licking the milk that exudes from pores on their mother's belly. They begin to come out of their burrows in January and start life on their own.

Double Splash. After getting a rare permit from the Australian government to catch platypuses, which are rigidly protected, Fleay made 22 sorties from his home in West Burleigh, Queensland. Tramping along the streams in a moving cloud of mosquitoes, he watched for the ripples stirred by swimming platypuses and listened for the characteristic double splash they make when they hit the water. In likely places he set funnel-mouthed box traps, caught a few adult platypuses and lots of eels and catfish.

On Jan. 22 he saw a baby female platypus puddling in the mud on the bank of the Albert River. The platypus saw Fleay and disappeared into a crevice, but a trap caught her during the night, and Fleay named her Pamela. Three days later he caught a male baby, Paul. Both Pamela and Paul took their captivity with resignation, but Paddy, another male, captured on Feb. 10, protested in a way that worried Fleay, who feared that Paddy might never see The Bronx.

Live Food. Back at West Burleigh, Fleay began the delicate job of conditioning the platypuses for life in The Bronx. They were installed in a Fleay-designed platypusary with a water tank and grass-lined burrows that simulated as closely as possible their natural habitat. Every afternoon Fleay took them from the burrows and put them in the tank. He encouraged visitors ("It helps them get accustomed to people and noise").

The big problem is food. Platypuses eat half their weight daily, and they demand live food. So every day Fleay dispenses 2,000 earthworms. 200 meal grubs, 30 crayfish, chafer grubs and crickets. Favorite item with the growing platypuses: small, wriggling grubs that Fleay raises under his house in bran and meal moistened with beer.

Pamela and Paul responded to pampering. They performed for the visitors, plunged and swam and grew healthy. But Paddy never joined the fun. He often swam upside down to show his displeasure.

Flight Test. Fortnight ago, Fleay gave his platypuses a flight test. He put them in grass-lined boxes and took them for a 60-mile ride to Brisbane on a Trans-Australia Airlines DC-3. At Brisbane they seemed cheerful, but when they got back home, they seemed slightly dazed and ignored tempting heaps of wriggling earthworms. Next day Pamela and Paul were back in form, but Paddy kept sticking his head underwater (a sign of distress). When he did not recover his spirits after two days. Fleay liberated him in a nearby river. "Paddy is so sensitive," explained Fleay. "that the trip to New York might easily kill him. We can't take risks like that."

Fleay is still trying, without much hope, to catch a replacement for Paddy. Most of this year's crop of young platypuses are already too mature. Last week, building a platypusary for Pamela's and Paul's trip to the U.S., Fleay was hoping that they would be reconciled to traveling by air. But even air travel will not be carefree. Between Australia and The Bronx, Pamela and Paul will demand--and get --7,000 earthworms, 165 crayfish, 130 chafer grubs and 1,300 meal grubs. By the time they arrive, Fleay estimates, they will have cost the New York Zoological Society about $6,500.

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