Hunting platypuses takes patience. On Thursday afternoon, I headed into the royal national park, south of Sydney, with researchers who had reintroduced a small population of the elusive monotremes two years ago.<\/p>\n
There were nets and torches \u2013 and our dinner. It could be a long wait.<\/p>\n
The platypus was thought to be locally extinct by the 1970s, after a chemical spill on a nearby highway washed through streams and the Hacking River, devastating the delicate ecosystem that platypuses need to thrive.<\/p>\n
But then, in 2023, Dr Gilad Bino, an ecologist and freshwater biologist at the University of New South Wales<\/a>, and his colleague, Dr Tahneal Hawke, introduced 10 platypuses into the national park in the hope of reestablishing a thriving population.<\/p>\n Dr Tahneal Hawke and Dr Gilad Bino by the river where they have set up 50 metres of orange netting to ensnare platypuses for their research. Photograph: Jessica Hromas\/The Guardian<\/p>\n The project paid quick dividends. A newborn platypus<\/a> was discovered in early 2024 and christened Gilli \u2013 a Dharawal word for \u201cflame\u201d. Three more adults were introduced in May.<\/p>\n This week, the researchers were hoping to find evidence that Gilli wasn\u2019t a fluke.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve lived in Australia for 10 years after moving from the US. And like many people, I had never seen a platypus in the wild. So I jumped at the chance to join Bino and Hawke this week when they ventured into the forest in search of their \u201cplatys\u201d.<\/p>\n The zigzaggy route<\/p>\n Each platypus introduced to the park in 2023 has a small transmitter about the size of a vitamin tablet. They signal to 40 underwater receivers along the Hacking River, allowing the researchers to know how the platypuses are faring.<\/p>\n A platypus can range over 5km, and they\u2019re \u201crelatively agile\u201d, according to Jackson Wilkes Walburn, a PhD candidate at UNSW working with Bino and Hawke.<\/p>\n The animals can scramble over land, up and down riverbeds and into weirs in search of food, or in the case of the males, mates. That agility can make it hard to know where they might be.<\/p>\n Bino and Hawke set up 50 metres of orange netting on the river on Thursday evening, with floats every metre, so any ensnared platypus could be collected within moments of hearing the telltale \u201cplatypus splash\u201d.<\/p>\n Bino unfurls a net to try to catch platypuses in the Hacking River, in the royal national park. The animals are mostly active at dawn and dusk. Photograph: Jessica Hromas\/The Guardian<\/p>\n \u201cPlatys often take a bit of the zigzaggy route; they\u2019re not flying down the [river] highway,\u201d Wilkes Walburn says. The long net off the river\u2019s bank gives the team \u201cthe best chance of picking them up\u201d.<\/p>\n The animals are crepuscular, meaning they\u2019re mostly active at dawn and dusk. Platypuses feed on spineless waterbugs, worms, yabbies and mayfly larvae, eating for about eight or 10 hours a night. Once the net is in the water, we wait.<\/p>\n A splash in the twilight<\/p>\n When you are new to hunting platypuses, every rustle in the dark sounds like monotreme action. The researchers always have eyes or ears on the net when it\u2019s in the water.<\/p>\n When dusk gives way to darkness, Bino, Hawke and Wilkes Walburn operate as platypus lifeguards, scanning the surface of the net with a spotlight every few minutes. Many research sessions go until midnight, others much later, and Bino and Hawke have been known to pull all-nighters.<\/p>\n At 8.03pm, we hear a splash.<\/p>\n \u201cRight on schedule,\u201d Wilkes Walburn says. He and Hawke jump into a small boat.<\/p>\n A minute later, Hawke has hoisted a platypus out of the net by its tail, checked for venomous spurs (it\u2019s a male \u2013 he has them) and placed it into a pillowcase.<\/p>\n Bino is waiting on the riverbank with a scanner to check who has been caught. Each of the released platypuses has an ID chip in the skin folds behind their necks.<\/p>\n Hawke pulls the first catch for night from the net \u2013 a male platypus that was one of the first platypuses to be released in the Hacking River in 2023. Photograph: Jessica Hromas\/The Guardian<\/p>\n We\u2019ve found Draco. He\u2019s one of the original 10 released in 2023.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s kind of a surprise,\u201d Bino says. Draco is a few kilometres from where the group was released. \u201cWe don\u2019t really know where they all are. But it\u2019s great to be reunited with one of the original 10, two and a half years later. Nice!\u201d<\/p>\n Bino still remembers the rush after capturing his first male platypus and reckoning with the spurs. They have a 1 cm-long spur on each hind leg. A prick can cause pain for months. Morphine doesn\u2019t help, he says. Thankfully, the trio in the park doesn\u2019t have first-hand experience.<\/p>\n A bush research theatre<\/p>\n Bino, who was cooking dinner before Draco arrived, races to set up a platypus-sized field hospital. He\u2019ll take a microbiome sample and attach a new transmitter to Draco that should last another three months.<\/p>\n Hawke takes swab from the mouth of a juvenile female platypus that is new to their database. Photograph: Jessica Hromas\/The Guardian<\/p>\n The animals are anaesthetised while the tests are being done, something Bino believes is \u201creally important\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cYou draw blood from the tip of the bill; it\u2019s one of the most sensitive organs the animal has,\u201d he says, noting some researchers test lucid animals. \u201c[But] when I started, I was like \u2018Uh-uh\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n Sign up to Five Great Reads<\/p>\n Each week our editors select five of the most interesting, entertaining and thoughtful reads published by Guardian Australia and our international colleagues. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Saturday morning<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com<\/a> to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n As Bino is with Draco, a call rings out from the riverbank, and platys begin flying into the net. Wilkes Walburn and Hawke have caught another male, but this one doesn\u2019t have an ID chip. It\u2019s a juvenile male, probably about a year-and-a-half to two years old, and just the second young platypus seen in the national park in the past 50 years.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s exciting,\u201d Bino says, turning to Hawke, his research partner for the past 10 years. \u201cOh, give me a hug! That\u2019s nice, very cool.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cUnreal!\u201d Hawke says into the night. \u201cWho\u2019s your parent? Gilli\u2019s brother? Cousin? Who knows. So exciting!\u201d<\/p>\n They\u2019ll have to run \u201ceverything\u201d with the new platypus: blood tests, urine samples, swabs of the mouth and cheek pouches, a fur sample and a small biopsy. They\u2019ll run a full genome to figure out who his parents are.<\/p>\n The discovery of a juvenile platypus confirms breeding is continuing in the original population introduced to the Hacking River. Photograph: Jessica Hromas\/The Guardian<\/p>\n Fifteen minutes later, another platypus comes out of the water. He\u2019s big at 1.6kg, with supple brown fur \u2013 another new juvenile. It\u2019s nearly impossible to age older platypuses, but this guy still has a protective sheath around his spurs, which means he was probably born last year and emerged from his mother\u2019s den earlier this season.<\/p>\n The atmosphere is electric in platypus land. Half an hour later, the team catches a fourth platypus of the night. This time it\u2019s a female. They aren\u2019t sure which female, but she is one of a pair released in May in the area.<\/p>\n Death is natural<\/p>\n It\u2019s not always good news, however. Earlier this month, a kayaker found a dead platypus in the national park. It was a male named Chaos from the original cohort of 10. Tests are ongoing to find out the cause of its death.<\/p>\n \u201cLife and death is natural,\u201d Bino says. \u201cIt could be natural mortality. We introduce adults and they have a natural longevity. [But] it\u2019s a rough period for males.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s peak mating season for platypuses and males can exhaust their energy stores while looking for a partner \u2013 or during territorial fights with other males.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re very sad to be aware of this [loss]. But the survival has been great, they\u2019re breeding, the reintroduction is currently successful,\u201d Bino says. Platypuses can live up to 20 years in the wild, according to the Australian Museum<\/a>.<\/p>\n There have been pollution scares. Peabody Energy, the operator of a coalmine upstream from the Royal national park, was issued with a clean-up notice <\/a>after a landslip turned the waters of some streams feeding into the Hacking River an oily-black. The event was localised and didn\u2019t have any major negative effects on the program.<\/p>\n