How the mystery of Winston Churchill’s dead platypus was finally solved

In 1943, a camouflaged ship set off from Australia to England carrying prime secret cargo – a single younger platypus.

Named after his would-be proprietor, UK prime minister Winston Churchill, the uncommon monotreme was an unprecedented present from a rustic desperately attempting to curry favour as World Warfare Two expanded into the Pacific and arrived on its doorstep.

However days out from Winston’s arrival, as warfare raged within the seas round him, the puggle was discovered lifeless within the water of his specifically made “platypusary”.

Fearing a possible diplomatic incident, Winston’s demise – alongside along with his very existence – was swept below the rug.

He was preserved, stuffed and quietly shelved inside his name-sake’s workplace, with rumours that he died of Nazi-submarine-induced shell-shock gently whispered into the ether.

The thriller of who, or what, actually killed him has eluded the world since – till now.

The world has at all times been fascinated by the platypus. An egg-laying mammal with the face and ft of a duck, an otter-shaped physique and a beaver-inspired tail, many thought the creature was an elaborate hoax; a taxidermy trick.

For Churchill, an avid collector of uncommon and unique animals, the platypus’s intrigue solely made him extra determined to have one – or six – for his menagerie.

And in 1943 he mentioned as a lot to the Australian overseas minister, H.V. ‘Doc’ Evatt.

Within the eyes of Evatt, the truth that his nation had banned the export of the creatures – or that they have been notoriously tough to move and none had ever survived a journey that lengthy – have been merely challenges to beat.

Australia had more and more felt deserted by the motherland because the Japanese drew nearer and nearer – and if a posse of platypuses would assist Churchill reply extra favourably to Canberra’s requests for assist, then so be it.

Conservationist David Fleay – who was requested to assist with the mission – was much less amenable.

“Think about any man carrying the duties Churchill did, with humanity on the rack in Europe and Asia, discovering time to even take into consideration, not to mention need, half-a-dozen duckbilled platypuses,” he wrote in his 1980 e book Paradoxical Platypus.

On Mr Fleay’s account, he managed to speak the politicians down from six platypuses to 1, and younger Winston was captured from a river close to Melbourne shortly after.

An elaborate platypusary – full with hay-lined burrows and recent Australian creek water – was constructed for him; a menu of fifty,000 worms – and duck egg custard as a deal with – was ready; and an attendant was employed to attend on his each want all through the 45-day voyage.

Throughout the Pacific, by means of Panama Canal and into the Atlantic Ocean Winston went – earlier than tragedy struck.

In a letter to Evatt, Churchill mentioned he was “grieved” to report that the platypus “kindly” despatched to him had died within the ultimate stretch of the journey.

“Its loss is a superb disappointment to me,” he mentioned.

The mission’s failure was stored secret for years, to keep away from any public outcry. However finally, experiences about Winston’s demise would start popping up in newspapers. The ship had encountered a German U-boat, they claimed, and the platypus had been shaken to demise amid a barrage of blasts.

“A small animal geared up with a nerve-packed, tremendous delicate invoice, in a position to detect even the fragile actions of a mosquito wriggler on stream bottoms in the dead of night of night time, can’t hope to deal with man-made enormities similar to violent explosions,” Mr Fleay wrote, many years later.

“It was so apparent that, however for the misfortunes of warfare, a tremendous, thriving, wholesome little platypus would have created historical past in being quantity certainly one of its type to take up residence in England.”

“It’s a tempting story, is not it?” PhD scholar Harrison Croft tells the BBC.

But it surely’s one which has lengthy raised suspicions.

And so final yr, Mr Croft launched into his personal journey: a seek for reality.

Accessing archives in each Canberra and London, the Monash College scholar discovered a bunch of information from the ship’s crew, together with an interview with the platypus attendant charged with protecting Winston alive.

“They did a kind of autopsy, and he was very explicit. He was very sure that there was no explosion, that it was all very calm and quiet on board,” Mr Croft says.

A state away, one other workforce in Sydney was trying into Winston’s life too. David Fleay’s private assortment had been donated to the Australian Museum, and employees all around the constructing have been determined to know if it held solutions.

“You’d experience within the lifts and a few physician from mammalogy… [would ask] ‘what archival proof is there that Winston died from depth cost detonations?'” the museum’s archive supervisor Robert Dooley tells the BBC.

“That is one thing that had intrigued folks for a very long time.”

With the assistance of a workforce of interns from the College of Sydney, they set about digitising all of Fleay’s information in a bid to search out out.

Even way back to the Forties, folks knew that platypuses have been voracious eaters. Legend of the species’ urge for food was so nice that the UK authorities drafted an announcement providing to pay younger boys to catch worms and ship them to feed Winston upon his arrival.

Within the platypus attendant’s logbook, the interns discovered proof that his rations en route have been being decreased as a few of the worms started to perish.

But it surely was water and air temperatures, which had been famous down at 8am and 6pm day-after-day, that held the important thing to fixing the thriller.

These readings have been taken at two of the cooler factors of the day, and nonetheless, because the ship crossed the equator over a few week, the recorded temperatures climbed properly past 27C – what we now know is the secure threshold for platypus journey.

With the advantage of hindsight – and an additional 80 years of scientific analysis into the species – the College of Sydney workforce decided Winston was basically cooked alive.

Whereas they cannot definitively rule out the submarine shell-shock story, they are saying the affect of these extended excessive temperatures alone would have been sufficient to kill Winston.

“It is method simpler to only shift the blame on the Germans, quite than say we weren’t feeding it sufficient, or we weren’t regulating its temperature accurately,” Ewan Cowan tells the BBC.

“Historical past is completely depending on who’s telling the story,” Paul Zaki provides.

To not be dissuaded by its preliminary try at platypus diplomacy, Australia would attempt once more in 1947.

Excessive off the achievement of efficiently breeding a platypus in captivity for the primary time – a feat that would not be replicated for one more 50 years – Mr Fleay satisfied the Australian authorities to let the Bronx Zoo have three of the creatures in a bid to deepen ties with the US.

Not like Winston’s secret journey throughout the Pacific, this voyage garnered large consideration. Betty, Penelope and Cecil docked in Boston to a lot fanfare, earlier than the trio was reportedly escorted by way of limousine to New York Metropolis, the place Australia’s ambassador was ready to feed them the ceremonial first worm.

Betty would die quickly after she arrived, however Penelope and Cecil rapidly grew to become celebrities. Crowds clamoured for a glimpse of the animals. A marriage was deliberate. The tabloids obsessed over their each transfer.

Platypus are solitary creatures, however New York had been promised lovers. And whereas Cecil was lovesick, Penelope was apparently sick of affection. Within the media, she was painted as a “brazen hussy”, “a type of saucy females who prefer to hold a male on a string”.

Till 1953 that’s, when the pair had a four-day fling – quite upsettingly described as “all-night orgies of affection” – fuelled by “copious portions of crayfish and worms”.

Alas, Penelope quickly started nesting, and the world excitedly awaited her platypups, which have been to be a large scientific milestone – solely the second bred in captivity, and the primary outdoors Australia.

After 4 months of princess therapy and double rations for Penelope, zookeepers checked on her nest in entrance of a throng of excited reporters.

However they discovered no infants – only a disgruntled-looking Penelope, who was summarily accused of faking her being pregnant to safe extra worms and fewer Cecil.

“It was an entire scandal,” Mr Cowan says – one from which Penelope’s popularity by no means recovered.

Years later, in 1957, she would vanish from her enclosure, sparking a weeks-long search and rescue mission which culminated within the zoo declaring her “presumed misplaced and possibly lifeless”.

A day after the hunt for Penelope was referred to as off, Cecil died of what the media identified as a “damaged coronary heart”.

Laid to relaxation with the pair was any actual future for platypus diplomacy.

Although the Bronx Zoo would attempt to replicate the trade with extra platypuses in 1958, the finnicky beasts lasted below a yr, and Australia quickly tightened legal guidelines banning their export. The one two which have left the nation since have lived on the San Diego Zoo since 2019.