If you’re lucky enough to be in Australia, you have a couple of options: A number of Australian Zoos and wildlife sanctuaries host platypuses, including the Taronge Zoo Sidney, the Sydney Wild Life Zoo and the Australian Reptile Park in New South Wales, the David Fleay Wildlife Park (named after David Fleay, who made international headlines in 1944 as the first person to successfully breed platypuses in captivity), Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary, Walkabout Creek Wildlife Centre, and the Australian Platypus Park at Tarzali Lakes in Queensland, the Adelaide Warrawong Wildlife Sanctuary in South Australia, or the Healesville Sanctuary in Victoria.
The alternative is to go to the San Diego Zoo in the United States of America, which has held Platypuses since 2019.
Or you can go out into the wilderness, and actually look! If you don’t know where to start you can check out the Platy Project webpage of the Autralian Conservation Foundation, which tracks platypus sightings for conservation purposes. Creeks or an alternative waterway or body of water is a requirement, but the specific spot is up to you. Follow your nose, or on of the locations posted online. Once you’ve selected where you want to go pack your bag and set your alarm: Platypuses are nocturnal, and the best time to spot them is early dawn.
Once you’re set up, look for circular ripple with bubbles in the middle, or perfectly V-shaped water trails. Keep in mind that platypuses will usually dive for less than a minute, so if you see circular ripples but no animal surfacing you probably saw a diving turtle. Conversely, if you’re seeing a perfectly V-shaped water trail but also a duck swimming at the front of it you are probably watching a duck. Keep in mind that platypuses aren’t flashy animals, and evolved to be inconspicuous, so don’t be surprised if it takes you a while to succeed in spotting one.
If you see a platypus be sure to take a photograph and send it to us, as well as your loved ones and the platy project, which tracks sightings to improve conservation efforts. If you don’t see a platypus we recommend to keep in mind that an unfortunate outcome doesn’t mean that you did anything wrong, and that what you learned along the way can still help you in the future, if you’re strong enough to search for lessons in your past.
If you life in the past instead of the present you may have additional options of seeing platypuses in real life. If you’re confined to Australia you probably won’t have to look as hard as you do now: Platypus population numbers were much higher in the past than they are in the present, so you’ll need less luck to spot one. If you’re worried about the potential risks of exposing yourself to Australian fauna without access to modern medicine you’ll be delighted to know that, much like in the present, there was an American zoo that held platypuses, specifically the Bronx Zoo, in New York. In this zoo three different groups of platypuses were exhibited, one platypus in 1922, three platypuses from 1947 to 1957, and three different platypuses in the exhibition season of 1958. All but one female died in captivity, but Penelope, a member of the second group, escaped in 1957, and was never seen again.
If you’re also weary of visiting the US in the 20th century you’ll probably need to improvise. While some people believe that European zoos, including the zoos of Frankfurt, Leipzig, Rotterdam, Budapest, and London have held captive platypuses in the past, it is currently considered more likely that these claims date back to mistranslations or misidentification of echidnas as platypuses, as likely was the case in Frankfurt, Leipzig, Rotterdam, and Budapest), or the omission of the fact that the presented platypuses were taxidermied, as was likely the case in London.
The fossil record is also quite sparse, so your best bet is probably to go back some 130 million years and visit an area near the south pole, which at the time contained the land that is now southern Australia. There you’ll be able to find Teinolophos trusleri, the earliest known monotreme ancestor of the platypus. Which, granted, isn’t a platypus, but probably interesting enough by itself.