The platypus is one of the world’s most peculiar animals, an egg-laying mammal known as a monotreme. The dietary habits of the platypus are as distinctive as its appearance, reflecting a specialized adaptation to its freshwater environment in Australia.
What Platypuses Eat
The platypus is a carnivore, and its diet consists almost entirely of bottom-dwelling, or benthic, invertebrates. Primary food sources include the larvae of insects like caddisflies and mayflies, freshwater shrimp, various types of worms, and small crayfish.
A platypus must eat a significant amount of food to maintain its energy levels, often consuming about 20% of its own body weight daily. This high demand for food means that a platypus will spend 10 to 12 hours a day actively hunting for prey.
Unique Foraging and Eating Methods
When a platypus dives underwater to hunt, it shuts its eyes, ears, and nostrils completely. Instead of relying on these common senses, it uses its soft, rubbery bill, which is equipped with thousands of specialized receptors to find food.
The bill has two types of sensors that work together. Electroreceptors detect the faint electrical fields generated by the muscle contractions of its invertebrate prey. Mechanoreceptors sense subtle changes in water pressure, helping the animal pinpoint movement.
Once prey is located, the platypus scoops it up along with bits of gravel and mud from the riverbed. It stores this mixture in its cheek pouches and returns to the surface to eat. Since a platypus has no teeth, it uses the collected gravel and tough, horny plates in its bill to grind up the hard exoskeletons of its prey.
Diet of a Baby Platypus
The diet of a baby platypus, known as a puggle, is entirely different from that of an adult. As mammals, puggles rely on their mother’s milk for all their nutritional needs. The mother platypus lacks nipples and instead secretes milk through pores in the skin on her abdomen.
The puggles drink this milk as it collects in grooves on their mother’s belly. They will nurse for three to four months while remaining safe within the nesting burrow. After this period, the young platypuses are weaned and begin to hunt for solid food on their own.