Animal
Platypus
The platypus is a furry animal with a bill like a duck. It swims in rivers and lays eggs, but it is a mammal!
The platypus is one of the strangest mammals on Earth. It has a soft bill, webbed feet and a flat tail, lives in the rivers and streams of eastern Australia, finds food underwater with its eyes shut, and is one of the only mammals that lays eggs.
Ornithorhynchus anatinus is a semi-aquatic monotreme endemic to eastern Australia. It lays eggs yet feeds its young milk, forages with its eyes, ears and nostrils closed by sensing prey through pressure receptors and electroreceptors in its bill, and is listed by the IUCN as Near Threatened.
Photo: Charles J. Sharp, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Meet the platypus
The platypus has a bill like a duck, a tail like a beaver and webbed feet.
It has soft brown fur. It is a mammal, but it lays eggs!
The platypus has a soft, rubbery bill, a streamlined furry body, short legs with webbed feet and a broad, flat tail. When European scientists first saw one, many of them thought it was a fake made by sewing parts of different animals together.
It is a real mammal: it has fur and feeds its babies milk. But together with the echidnas, it belongs to a special group called monotremes, the only mammals that lay eggs. A male platypus is about 40 to 63 centimeters long and weighs up to about 3 kilograms.
The platypus and the echidnas form the order Monotremata, distinguished from all other mammals by laying eggs. Its skeleton shares several features with reptiles, including a pectoral girdle of five bones, splayed limbs and rudimentary ribs on the neck vertebrae.
Size varies by region: southern animals are larger than northern ones. The Australian Museum gives males 400 to 630 millimeters long and 0.8 to 3 kilograms, and females 370 to 550 millimeters and 0.6 to 1.7 kilograms. The dense, waterproof fur is dark brown to reddish brown with a light brown to silver underfur.
Quick facts
- Group
- Mammal
- Length
- 0.4 to 0.63 m
- Weight
- 0.8 to 3 kg
- Top speed
- up to 3.6 km/h
- Lifespan in the wild
- up to 20 years
Where it lives
Platypuses live in Australia.
They live in rivers, creeks and ponds. They sleep in burrows dug into the river bank.
Platypuses live only in eastern Australia, from the warm rainforest streams of far northern Queensland to the cold mountain rivers of Tasmania and the Australian Alps.
They need fresh water: rivers, creeks and ponds, especially streams with pebbly or gravelly bottoms. When they are not feeding, they rest in a burrow they dig in the bank. There is a small population on Kangaroo Island in South Australia that people introduced.
The platypus is endemic to Australia's freshwater systems: eastern Queensland and New South Wales, eastern, central and southwestern Victoria, and throughout Tasmania. It once occurred in South Australia's Adelaide Hills and Mount Lofty Ranges but is now extinct in that state except for an introduced population on western Kangaroo Island; there is no evidence it ever lived naturally in Western Australia.
It forages in both slow and fast-flowing (riffle) stretches, favoring cobble and gravel beds, and shelters in burrows in banks, in rock crevices or under the roots of streamside plants. The western limits of its range are poorly known.
Continent
Where can you find this animal?
- Lives here naturally · Countries and seas named by a scientific source
- Sightings recorded · Records of wild sightings (GBIF)
Lives here naturally · Countries and seas named by a scientific source
Freshwater rivers and streams of eastern Australia: eastern Queensland, New South Wales, much of Victoria and all of Tasmania. An introduced population lives on Kangaroo Island, South Australia.
Places: Australia.
Source: Australian Museum · checked October 2026
Sightings recorded · Records of wild sightings (GBIF)
Counts of GBIF records of wild observations (human and machine) and preserved specimens. Records include introduced populations, vagrants, escaped or released animals and misidentifications, so a country with records is not necessarily part of the native range.
Wild sightings have been recorded in Australia, United States, Germany and Japan.
Source: gbif · checked October 2026
Range maps show where scientists say an animal lives, often country by country. An animal may live in only part of a country shown, and sightings records can include animals that wandered far from home.
What it eats
Platypuses eat small water animals.
They eat insect babies, shrimp, worms and tadpoles. They hunt at night, at the bottom of the river.
Platypuses are carnivores that eat small animals living in the water. Most of their food is insect larvae from the river bottom, plus shrimp, swimming beetles, water bugs, tadpoles, worms, small mussels and snails. Sometimes they snap up moths or cicadas from the surface.
They feed mostly at night and spend about 10 to 12 hours a day looking for food. Adult platypuses have no teeth. They stow their catch in cheek pouches, then swim to the surface and grind it between hard pads in their mouths.
The diet is dominated by benthic invertebrates, especially insect larvae, with free-swimming prey such as shrimps, beetles, water bugs and tadpoles, and occasionally worms, pea mussels, snails and insects taken at the surface. Foraging bouts total about 10 to 12 hours a day, mostly at night.
The bill sifts small prey from the substrate, while larger prey is taken one at a time. Exactly how the bill's receptors are used to locate prey is still not fully understood, an open question in sensory biology.
Did you know?
Platypuses store fat in their tails.
A platypus's broad, flat tail stores fat, a bit like a backpack of snacks for hard times.
The broad tail serves as a store of fat reserves.
A bill with a sixth sense
The platypus shuts its eyes and ears underwater.
It finds food with its bill. The bill can feel tiny movements and sense the electricity made by moving animals.
When a platypus dives, it closes its eyes, ears and nostrils. So how does it find food? Its bill is covered in special sensors. Some feel tiny touches and changes in water pressure, and others pick up the weak electric signals made by living prey. A platypus has about 40,000 of these electric sensors.
Its front feet are webbed and do the paddling, while its partly webbed back feet steer like rudders. Its fur is thick and waterproof, and its flat tail stores fat for hard times. Males have a sharp spur on each back ankle, connected to a venom gland.
The bill is the primary sense organ, bearing mechanoreceptors sensitive to pressure and electroreceptors that detect weak electric fields, while the eyes, ears and nostrils are closed underwater. The ear openings and eyes sit in grooves behind the bill.
Propulsion comes from the short, webbed forelimbs, with the partially webbed hind feet acting as rudders; strong claws are used for burrowing. The tail stores fat reserves. On land, short, splayed limbs make movement costly, using almost 30 percent more energy than a terrestrial mammal of similar size. Males carry a horny ankle spur linked to a venom gland.
Eggs and milk
A mother platypus lays eggs in a cozy burrow.
She keeps them warm with her tail. When the babies hatch, she feeds them milk.
A mother platypus digs a long burrow and makes a nest of wet plants to stop her eggs from drying out. About 21 days after mating she lays 1 to 3 eggs, usually 2, and curls around them, holding them against her belly with her tail.
The eggs hatch after about 10 days. Platypus mothers have no nipples: milk oozes from two furry patches on her belly, and the babies drink it from there. After 3 to 4 months the young leave the burrow.
Mating takes place mainly between August and October in New South Wales and Victoria, earlier in Queensland. The female prepares a nest in a long, complex burrow, carrying in wet vegetation to keep eggs and young moist. After about 21 days' gestation she lays 1 to 3 (usually 2) eggs and incubates them, pressed to her belly by her tail, for possibly about 10 days.
Young suckle from two milk patches on the abdomen, as monotremes have no teats. Lactation lasts 3 to 4 months before the young emerge. Both sexes can breed in their second year, though many females do not breed until about four, and platypuses can live about 20 years.
A shy night swimmer
Platypuses like to be alone.
They come out at dusk and at night. In the water you see three small bumps: the head, the back and the tail.
Platypuses are active all year, mostly at dusk and during the night, and they spend the day in a short burrow in the bank. They usually live alone, though several may share the same stretch of river.
A swimming platypus is easy to miss. Only three small bumps show above the water: its head, back and tail. When it dives, it arches its back and slips under, leaving a spreading ring on the surface. Platypuses swim at about 1 meter per second in fast water.
Platypuses are mostly crepuscular and nocturnal, with activity shaped by locality, human disturbance, temperature, day length and food. They are largely solitary, though home waters overlap; captive animals growl softly when disturbed, but calls have not been recorded in the wild.
In the water they show a low profile of head, back and tail, dive with an arched back that leaves a ring, and lack visible ears, which distinguishes them from the native water rat. Swimming speed is about 1 meter per second in fast water and about 0.4 when foraging.
Did you know?
People once thought the platypus was a fake.
When European scientists first saw a platypus, many thought someone had stitched together parts of different animals as a joke.
Early European naturalists doubted the first specimens were genuine, so unusual was the combination of bill, fur and webbed feet.
Keeping rivers healthy
Platypuses need clean rivers.
They are protected by law in Australia. Keeping streams clean and full of water helps them.
The IUCN lists the platypus as Near Threatened. It is protected by law in every Australian state where it lives, and it cannot be caught or harmed except for scientific research.
Because platypuses depend completely on fresh water, damage to rivers and streams could make them decline in the future. Scientists say we still do not know how many live in many local rivers, so counting and studying them is an important job.
Listed as Near Threatened by the IUCN, the platypus is legally protected in all states where it occurs. Its historical range has changed little except in South Australia, but there is a general lack of knowledge of abundance at the level of local catchments, so trends are hard to predict.
Dependence on established freshwater systems makes it sensitive to changes in rivers. Natural threats include predators such as foxes and possibly dogs on land and in shallow water, and a fungal skin infection that has caused severe ulcers in Tasmanian platypuses.
IUCN Red List
How is the platypus doing in the wild?
- Least Concern
- Near Threatened (this animal)
- Vulnerable
- Endangered
- Critically Endangered
- Extinct in the Wild
- Extinct
Near Threatened
Not at risk yet, but it could be soon.
See the IUCN Red List assessment · The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2022.2
Amazing facts
-
People once thought the platypus was a fake.
When European scientists first saw a platypus, many thought someone had stitched together parts of different animals as a joke.
Early European naturalists doubted the first specimens were genuine, so unusual was the combination of bill, fur and webbed feet.
-
A platypus mom has no nipples.
Platypus milk oozes from two furry patches on the mother's belly, and the babies drink it from there.
Monotremes lack teats; young suckle from two milk patches on the female's abdomen.
-
A platypus can sense electricity.
Sensors in a platypus's bill can pick up the tiny electric signals made by moving prey.
Electroreceptors in the bill detect weak electric fields generated by the muscle activity of prey.
-
Platypuses store fat in their tails.
A platypus's broad, flat tail stores fat, a bit like a backpack of snacks for hard times.
The broad tail serves as a store of fat reserves.
Words to know
- monotreme
- a mammal that lays eggs, like the platypus and the echidna
- burrow
- a tunnel or hole an animal digs to live in
- electroreception
- the ability to sense weak electric signals
- webbed feet
- feet with skin between the toes, for swimming
- larva
- the young, wormlike stage of an insect
- endemic
- found naturally in only one place in the world
Discovery challenge
-
How are platypus babies born?
How do platypus babies start life, which makes them unusual among mammals?
How does the start of life in monotremes such as the platypus differ from all other mammals?
- They hatch from eggs
- They grow in a pouch from the start
- They are born under ice
Show the answer
They hatch from eggs
Platypus babies hatch from eggs!
It lays eggs, though it is a mammal with fur that feeds its babies milk.
Monotremes are the egg-laying mammals: the platypus and the echidnas.
-
How does a platypus find food underwater?
How does a platypus find food with its eyes shut?
With its eyes, ears and nostrils closed underwater, what does a platypus use to locate prey?
- With its special bill
- With its eyes wide open
- With its tail
Show the answer
With its special bill
Its bill feels for food.
Its bill senses touch, pressure and tiny electric signals from prey.
Mechanoreceptors and electroreceptors in the bill.
-
Where does a platypus live?
What kind of place does a platypus need?
Which describes the platypus's range?
- Rivers and streams in eastern Australia
- Deserts of Africa
- The open ocean
Show the answer
Rivers and streams in eastern Australia
It lives in rivers in Australia.
Freshwater rivers, creeks and ponds in eastern Australia, with burrows in the banks.
Freshwater systems of eastern Australia, from Queensland to Tasmania.
-
What does a platypus mom feed her babies?
What do baby platypuses drink after they hatch?
What do young platypuses feed on for their first 3 to 4 months?
- Milk
- Seeds
- Nothing
Show the answer
Milk
She feeds them milk.
They drink milk that oozes from patches on their mother's belly.
Milk is secreted from abdominal patches; there are no teats.
Places where you might see it
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Australia
Australia is a country and the smallest continent, surrounded by ocean in the Southern Hemisphere. Much of its middle is dry and flat, most people live near the coast, and its animals include kangaroos, koalas and the platypus, a mammal that lays eggs.
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For parents & teachers
What children will learn
- Explain what makes the platypus a mammal and what makes it unusual (egg-laying).
- Describe how the platypus bill senses prey.
- Describe the platypus's freshwater habitat and nightly routine.
- Explain why healthy rivers matter for platypuses.
Recommended ages: 3 to 17 · About 15 minutes
Talk about it
- If you found an animal no one had seen before, how would you convince people it was real?
- Why might hunting with closed eyes work well in a muddy river?
- What could people do to keep streams healthy for platypuses?
Try at home or in class
- Blindfold feel-hunt: hide a few smooth pebbles and pasta shapes in a tray of sand and find them by touch only, like a platypus using its bill.
- Waterproof fur test: with a grown-up, drip water onto a feather or a wool sock rubbed with a little oil, and compare with plain cotton.
Key vocabulary: monotreme, burrow, electroreception, webbed feet, larva, endemic
Where these facts come from
- The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species , International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN terms of use (no redistribution of Red List data or range maps))
- GBIF Backbone Taxonomy and GBIF Occurrence Search , Global Biodiversity Information Facility (CC0 1.0 (backbone); occurrence counts are facts derived from records under CC0, CC BY and CC BY-NC)
- Platypus , Australian Museum
- Platypus , San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance
- Wikidata , Wikimedia Foundation (CC0 1.0)
- Wikimedia Commons , Wikimedia Foundation (Per file: Public domain, CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA only (credited on each page))
Checked, not yet human-reviewed. Last updated October 24, 2026. Spotted a mistake? Tell us.