Jack Ashby

What became of the poor thing?

Well, unfortunately, just four days out of Liverpool docks, the ship was torpedoed by German U-boats.

And although the ship didn't sink, the shockwaves, I guess, to such a sensitive animal, especially after a long voyage where its worm rations had been reduced, it died.

So I think it's kind of extraordinary that a platypus was a victim of...

World War II bombing.

Yes, a World War II attack.

Do we know where this platypus is now?

We don't.

We know that the story of the import and export of the platypus was kept from the British public because the failure isn't good propaganda.

But Churchill then kept the taxidermied animal on his desk, but its whereabouts are currently unknown.

Yeah.

Well, yeah, it's hard to observe this in the wild because they are tricky species to study.

But what's been seen in captivity is it's very much up to the female platypus that whenever the male comes knocking, if she's not keen, she'll just swim off to another place.

uh area but when when she is ready they engage in this this beautiful aquatic dance where they follow each other around and they they bite on like he'll bite onto her tail and vice versa and they'll swim around in these platypus love circles uh and kind of go upside down and and tumble through the water um and then when when the moment comes

he'll bite onto her neck or onto her back and pop his penis out of his cloaca, which is... Out of his cloaca?

Yep, so monostreams have cloacas, which is a kind of one-stop shop for all of their reproduction and waste disposal needs.

It's all the one thing, isn't it?

Yep, absolutely.

So they don't have separate holes.

They just have the one hole.