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ENVIRONMENTAL INFORMATION
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THE PLATYPUS

BUBBLES THE soft stuffed toy PLATYPUS

With a bill like a duck, webbed feet, and an egg laying capability, Bubbles the platypus is one of the most unusual animals in the world. She is very quiet and very few people have seen her. Usually all you can see of her is the tip of her bill, and the top of her head as she floats in the water. Then with a rolling dive and a flap of her flat tail, she is gone.

Bubbles has two burrows. One is a sort of general living burrow which is small and quite simple, often just above the water in a tangle of tree roots. The other is the nesting burrow and is usually quite long and plugged up with earth at various intervals to keep it safe.

Up the end of the nesting burrow is a chamber with a nest of damp grasses and leaves. Bubbles usually lays two eggs in the nest which hatch in a couple of weeks, after being held between her tail and belly as she curls up to keep them warm. The babies live for 4-5 months in the dark chamber, surviving on milk. Bubbles regularly goes out to feed, carefully closing up the burrow as she goes.

Bubbles noses about the bottom of the river with her wonderful bill. She closes her eyes and ears and nostrils and just feels her way around under water, receiving information from her sensitive bill. She sifts through the silt and stores any food she finds in her large cheek pouches. She then comes to the surface and rests while she chews the food between her tongue and various ridges and grinding plates inside her bill. Bubbles actually had some milk teeth when she was a baby, but these were not replaced when they were shed.

Platypus are found along the eastern part of Australia. While they may still be reasonably common, they are under threat from such things as polluted streams and disturbed habitat, fishing nets and dams and are in continuous decline. In Australia we have a very bad record of polluting waterways.