"(GENTLE CLARINET SOLO)" "It has webbed feet like a frog, a bill like a duck and venom like a snake." "And oddest of all, it lays eggs like a bird." "So much of its life is spent underwater or underground that the life of the platypus is still largely unknown, an irresistible challenge to film-maker David Parer." "I've always been fascinated by the mysteries of how platypus have their young." "And over the next three years, we're going to take you on a journey to discover what happens deep inside their nesting burrows." "It's a truly amazing story." "(QUIRKY CLARINET MUSIC)" "Maybe she's active." "By tracking its daily life, researchers will help Parer reveal the most intimate moments in the life of what is surely the strangest animal on earth." "(SINUOUS CLARINET MUSIC OVER S YNCOPATED PERCUSSION)" "The high plateau of Tasmania, the southernmost link in a mountain chain that stretches the whole length of Australia's eastern coast." "When the winter blizzards blow in from the Southern Ocean, life here gets tough." "Yet, even here, the platypus thrives." "Its thick fur provides near-perfect insulation as it forages for a sparse living in the frozen tarns." "The spring thaw turns mountain streams into torrents." "Humans are rare in the remote Tasmanian wilderness." "But platypuses are plentiful." "There's prey to catch with their probing bills under every rock - shrimps and worms and the larvae of aquatic insects." "DAVID:" "I've looked for platypus up and down the east coast of Australia." "But the wild rivers of Tasmania are the greatest place to find them." "But even here, they're difficult to see." "They seem to meld into the water and rocks, and then suddenly disappear." "When Europeans first encountered it, the platypus seemed almost too weird to be real." "The name comes from the Greek for 'flat-footed'." "Yet it was the creature's duck bill that most fascinated 19th-century zoologists." "200 years on, we're just beginning to understand what a remarkable instrument it is." "In fact, there's a lot about this secretive animal that we're only finding out now." "As the early naturalists discovered, the platypus is not an easy animal to study." "Its burrows may run back into the banks for 30m." "And they soon learned to be cautious." "They found that the venomous spur of an angry male caused pain and swelling that lasted for weeks." "So it wasn't till the 1880s that scientists confirmed that the platypus really did lay eggs." "By the early 1900s, they were learning how to keep platypuses alive in captivity." "In 1944, naturalist David Fleay successfully bred from a captive pair called Jack and Jill." "(LILTING MUSIC)" "NEWSREEL:" "Months ago, David Fleay noticed" "Jill was building a nest." "He knew she was building up her milk supply." "He then dug down and uncovered the burrow." "To his delight, he found a youngster already well grown." "But this would be the only platypus born in captivity for 50 years." "And even today, little is known about how they breed in the wild." "A Quiet valley in northern Tasmania in the headwaters of the South Esk River." "(TRANQUIL MUSIC)" "An unassuming farm dam proves an ideal site for biologist Nina Koch." "She needs to trap a female platypus, the first step in an ambitious project." "NINA:" "It's really unbelievable that these farmlands can be such a good place for platypus to live in." "They seem to be enormously productive, ideal habitat for females to breed in." "DAVID:" "I heard about Nina's work in Tasmania and came over to join her." "Perhaps she may be able to help us in our Quest to find breeding platypus." "Nina has been fascinated by the platypus ever since she saw one on TV as a child." "Now she's come all the way from Germany to take part in a two-year study." "The aim?" "To find out more about how female platypuses raise their young." "First, Nina measures the platypus's exact dimensions." "The tiny craters in her leathery bill are receptors." "Some are sensitive to touch, others to the minute electrical impulses emitted by her prey." "Is that better?" "Just keep it..." "Yeah." "That will do." "Yeah, probably oil enough." "And heavy enough." "Next, Nina attaches a tiny radio transmitter to the platypus's fur." "It needs to be tested thoroughly before next year's full-scale breeding study." "(REGULAR SOFT BEEPING)" "Nina decides to call the female Shy, after a platypus character in a children's book." "(PASTORAL OBOE MUSIC)" "Within days, Nina has identified the precise location of one of Shy's sleeping burrows on an island in the dam." "NINA:" "We've tracked Shy for a couple of days now." "And we could follow her to this island and she's sleeping right here in her burrow and we are going to put an infra-red video camera in so we can see what she's doing in her burrow." "Just before dawn, Shy returns to sleep." "For Nina and her partner Markus Utesch, this is the first view of a platypus underground." "There she is:" "She's coming in." "Next year, they'll try to get a camera inside the burrow of a breeding platypus." "That is absolutely great:" "Wow:" "A few weeks later," "Nina and Markus find a baby platypus near the dam." "It's only just emerged from the nest." "Soon after, they find another bigger youngster." "NINA:" "This baby looked much more like an adult." "It weighed 610 grams, so double the size of the one that we caught before." "We released this baby in one of the farm dams and then it started immediately to feed along the border of the lake." "We tried the next day to see it again." "I sat on a pontoon and paddled towards the little platypus." "He just stopped feeding and suddenly, he even came closer to me." "He was by far more curious than afraid." "Nina is hooked." "This will be an ideal location for next year's study." "The only other animals on earth that are even distantly related to the platypus are the echidnas." "Like the platypus, the short-beaked echidna has looked much the same since the age of the dinosaurs." "It too has evolved a highly specialised mouth - not a bill, but a beak - which can be used as a crowbar, if need be, and a long sticky tongue to pull ants and termites from deep within their nests." "Despite their different lifestyles, the echidna and the platypus share one crucial characteristic." "They're the only surviving members of an ancient group of egg-laying mammals, the monotremes." "(THUNDER RUMBLES)" "It's 60." "That's past her." "Peggy Rismiller and Mike McKelvey have been tracking and studying echidnas for 15 years." "What they've discovered about the echidna's breeding cycle may help David Parer in his pursuit of the platypus." "Let's whisper." "Up to a dozen echidnas at a time may be carrying transmitters." "Let's see what they're doing." "OK." "It's always worth seeing what Hari's doing." "What Hari's doing is looking for a mate." "Mostly, echidnas lead solitary lives." "But when a female comes on heat, males will gather from far and wide." "PEGG Y:" "The females emit a scent and the scent is called a pheromone and it's something that humans often can't smell, but obviously the males can smell it." "The pheromone, of course, would be able to go cross-country on wind and attract the males." "And we've seen males cross this peninsula several times and then eventually end up with a female." "Hari and several other males are already here." "And Whisper is on his way." "Yep, he's there." "Whisper joins what's called an echidna train, a group of males all paying court to a single female." "OK." "(REGULAR HIGH-PITCHED BEEPS)" "She had an old burrow over here." "A train can stay in place for up to a week, with the males constantly jockeying for position." "They must be patient, but ready for instant action." "Mating will take place just once when the female decides that the time and the partner are right." "To try to capture the elusive courtship ritual of a platypus," "David travels to the far north of Queensland." "Here in the tropical rainforest, the mating season has already begun." "(PEACEFUL MUSIC)" "This female is feeding hard to ready herself for the rigours of motherhood." "Every 40 seconds or so, she must surface to breathe." "This is when she's most vulnerable." "Eyes and ears are open wide, alert for danger." "But as soon as she dives, she shuts them tight." "Using only the sensors in her bill, she's built up a detailed mental map of her feeding ground." "And she knows its inhabitants too, especially the resident cormorant." "(MYSTERIOUS MUSIC)" "The white-faced heron minds its own business." "The cormorant minds the platypus's." "(PLAYFUL ORCHESTRAL MUSIC)" "Each time the platypus dives, the cormorant follows, snapping up shrimp and small fish flushed out by the foraging platypus." "And if the platypus rests too long between dives, the cormorant lets her know it." "In this particular river system, almost every pool has several resident platypuses and a single cormorant ready to exploit them." "(GENTLE MUSIC)" "The other inhabitants of the pool give the platypus no trouble at all." "The azure kingfishers are peaceable neighbours too." "They may occasionally snap up fish and shrimp she drives to the surface but at least they don't harass her to dive for them." "Most platypuses have a broader home range than a single pool." "This muddy tributary to the main stream is a favourite feeding ground." "(PEACEFUL MUSIC)" "Platypuses make their way up the creek at all hours of the day and night to feed." "They can sense the vibrations of their prey through the receptors in their bills." "(PLAYFUL MUSIC)" "DAVID:" "I've been here for about three months now and I've been desperately trying to find a place where the platypus are courting." "I think we might be onto something here." "This is Fern Flat." "It appears to be dominated by a male and he does his patrolling, and again, it appears that there's a female, who I think is just coming up to her burrow or area that she spends a lot of time at now." "As the light begins to fade, the platypuses start to make their way further up the narrow creek." "There's even better feeding where it runs through cleared farmland, but the platypuses will only venture there at night." "DAVID:" "This is an ideal creek to film a platypus with an infra-red camera." "I really like using infra-red cameras because you can capture behaviours at night that no-one's ever seen before." "We've put up a red light." "The platypus can see the red light but they don't seem to be disturbed by it." "Sitting there beside the bank of the river with the water running through my boots and the legs of the tripod in the water, as the animals slowly work their way up towards me, they would stop and glance up and then keep on coming." "They were totally unafraid." "In the first hour after dark, six platypus passed me." "And then, a water rat appeared." "Water rats are about the same size as a platypus but much fiercer." "A few nights later," "David Parer sets up his infra-red equipment on a bridge overlooking the main river." "Just below the bridge, a big male platypus has established his home range." "But tonight, he has a challenger from further up the river." "The resident male is grooming himself on a log, apparently unaware of the intruder." "(SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC)" "Despite being caught by surprise, the resident male has won the encounter easily." "He hasn't had to use his most damaging weapon." "The poisonous spur on his hind leg is fed by a venom gland that in the breeding season reaches its maximum size." "Day and night now, the big male patrols his home range." "(DRAMATIC MUSIC)" "He's spotted another male lurking behind a stump." "Without hesitation, he steams into battle." "(DRAMATIC MUSIC)" "Whether platypuses regularly use their spurs in these encounters or whether they're weapons of last resort, we don't know." "In this case, the resident male is triumphant and a female is ready to be courted." "(GENTLE HARP MUSIC)" "The male grasps the female's tail and the courtship dance begins." "(SWEET ORCHESTRAL MUSIC)" "The dance can continue for 20 minutes or more." "Whether the female is courted and mated by many males or just one is something else we don't know for sure." "Finally, it looks as though the male mounts the female and mating takes place." "The bare patch on her tail may be a sign that she's been courted often in recent days." "Now she's returning to her nesting burrow." "One or two eggs, perhaps even three, are on the way." "Healesville Sanctuary in southern Australia." "Much of what we know about platypus mating and breeding has been learned by Les Fisk and his colleagues from the captive animals at Healesville Sanctuary." "For 10 years, a male and female platypus have lived in this elaborate artificial world." "Through a maze of tunnels, pipes and tanks, video cameras record their every move." "(CAMERA WHIRRS)" "Two years ago, for the first time since David Fleay's success in the 1940s," "Fisk managed to breed platypuses in captivity." "(PLAYFUL MUSIC)" "For most of the year, Karina, the female, will have nothing to do with En, the male." "But spring is in the air at Healesville Sanctuary." "David Parer has already been manning his remote cameras for two weeks." "Today, finally, the preliminaries are over and the serious courtship has begun." "(TENSE MUSIC)" "(PLAYFUL MUSIC)" "The moment that she's ready to mate can be fleeting." "En is determined that he's the one who'll be around when that moment comes." "But her attempted escape was all part of the ritual." "Karina soon returns to the dance." "Two years ago, this couple successfully produced twins." "Judging by the way the courtship is consummated, the signs are good for this season too." "(WONDROUS MUSIC)" "Summer has come again to Tasmania and its wild rivers are swollen with melting snow." "In a Quiet backwater, as temperatures rise and the days lengthen, a female platypus is collecting material for her nest." "(BIRDS CHIRP)" "She takes leaves, one by one, in her bill and jams them under her tail." "(GENTLE MUSIC)" "To safeguard it from flooding, she's dug the entrance to her burrow several metres up the steep bank." "(TENSE MUSIC BUILDS)" "(DESCENDING MUSICAL SCALE)" "Over the next few days, she'll make dozens of trips like this until the nesting chamber at the end of her long burrow is lined with sticks and leaves." "Back on the South Esk River, Nina Koch and Markus Utesch are joined, once again, by David Parer for the start of a new season's work." "DAVID:" "In the early afternoon we go down to the South Esk River and set up a series of nets." "These nets were originally designed to catch eels but they're also really good and safe for catching platypus as well." "Yep." "They position the nets across the water flow to trap the nightly traffic of platypuses as they feed up and down the river." "(THUNDER RUMBLES)" "DAVID:" "In the late afternoon, the platypus come out of their burrows and start feeding." "They're very good at avoiding nets because their sensitive bill can pick up the water flowing through the mesh." "Many evade the nets but, eventually, we catch one." "Judging by the dates that last year's youngsters emerged from their nesting burrow," "Nina and Markus have worked out that the females will be laying their eggs very soon." "Now is the time to fix radio transmitters to them." "NINA:" "Oooh:" "This one has a large bare patch on her tail - a sign that she's probably been courted intensively." "Her tail." "Yeah, what an odd animal." "This might be a mating mark." "All the fur is away from the tail surface." "They discover that she's one of the females they trapped and tagged last year." "In fact, it's their old friend Shy." "(Whistles) 8017." "That's Shy." "Wow, we got Shy back." "Welcome back." "Great:" "After several weeks exhausting work setting nets up and down the river," "Nina and Markus manage to catch seven females." "(PEACEFUL MUSIC)" "Each one is fitted with a new transmitter and released back into the river exactly where she was caught." "For Nina and Markus, it's the start of another period of intense work, tracking all seven females for hours at a time." "(REGULAR HIGH-PITCHED BEEPING)" "(STATIC)" "(BEEPING CONTINUES)" "They find there's a wide variation in the platypuses' behaviour." "(REGULAR BEEPING)" "Some feed mostly in daylight." "Others sleep during the day and feed all night." "Some travel a kilometre or more up and down the river each feeding session." "Others, including Shy, feed in one pool most of the time." "Where's the strongest signal coming from?" "Um..." "Downstream?" "Nope." "She must be sitting in there." "Wow." "Shy sleeps in the same burrow each day." "Nina and Markus want to pinpoint its exact location because there's a good chance it's where she's built a nest and is nursing her young." "(REGULAR BEEPING)" "Got reception here." "And it's getting weaker." "Which gain do you have?" "10." "Gain 10?" "Maximum gain?" "Gain 10." "I only have, like, one." "(BEEPING)" "I would say it's about here." "It must be around here." "(BEEPING)" "Mark this point here." "Gets weaker here." "This is exciting." "Got another burrow." "Yep." "And this one looks a bit different than the others." "You should mark the entrance." "Er..." "Meanwhile, Peggy Rismiller and Mike McKelvey are still keeping track of their echidnas." "You think try again from here?" "(REGULAR BEEPING)" "There we are." "Right towards that cypress." "Three weeks ago, this female was at the head of a mating train." "She should by now have laid an egg." "OK, I'm just going to feel first." "Very tight little pouch." "Just be very careful because..." "There's an egg." "Oh, my Jesus." "See if you can get her closer down your way." "I'm going to pull the pouch open." "There's the egg." "There's the egg." "And it's a girl." "10 days after the egg is laid a puggle will hatch." "PEGG Y:" "In the egg, the echidna develops an enamel-covered egg tooth." "It needs this egg tooth to actually rip open this leathery shell and then pull itself out onto the mother's belly." "Look, there's the back of it." "Inside the pouch it's really moist and humid because that's what the puggle needs right now." "As far as we know, at two grams it has to breathe through its skin." "Tiny though it is, the puggle can safely be removed from its mother's pouch for a minute or so." "At two days old, there's almost no difference between a baby echidna and a baby platypus." "Less than two weeks later, it's already 100 times heavier than when it was hatched." "It's a girl." "The baby echidna, by now, has a discernible beak, just as a baby platypus would have a recognisable bill." "After seven weeks in the pouch, the mother leaves her young one in a burrow, returning every five days or so to let it suckle." "Instead of nipples, the mother has specially adapted pores clustered in patches on her tummy." "As the baby suckles, the mother expresses the milk through her skin." "PEGG Y:" "It doesn't need its eyes." "I think it's like all very small animals - they go on scent - and so the young is scenting where the milk patch is." "At six months, the young one is almost ready for independence." "(THUNDER, BIRDSONG)" "Back at the South Esk River," "Markus and Nina have decided that the time has come to try to take a look inside Shy's nesting burrow." "(Markus asks Question in German)" "(SERENE MUSIC)" "Shy has been feeding regularly for 16 hours in every 24, returning to the same burrow each day to sleep." "They're sure she's nursing young." "(MUSIC INTENSIFIES)" "It's late evening." "Shy has already left the burrow to feed." "Nina, Markus and David have at least eight hours to try to get a glimpse inside the nesting chamber." "(BIRDSONG)" "First, Markus drills a hole carefully into the burrow roof." "frequent measurements over the past two weeks have told him exactly where and how deep to drill." "Meanwhile, David sets up and tests an endoscope with a tiny video camera mounted on its end." "DAVID:" "So, down is like that." "NINA:" "Yep." "Then you straighten it up." "Mm-hm." "DAVID:" "It was really exciting going down into the nest chamber for the first time." "Those are roots coming down into the top." "And then we saw the entrance to the chamber itself." "(MYSTERIOUS MUSIC)" "And the nest was a really complex structure." "It was tightly woven leaves wrapped around with sticks and roots." "And there was even some green plastic in amongst the leaves." "That's the roof there." "DAVID:" "But that's when our frustrations really began." "Over a period of 17 days, we went in six times, into the burrow." "But we just couldn't penetrate the nest." "And then at last, we got the endoscope through the nest wall." "We first glimpsed a tiny bit of flesh through the leaves." "(HIGH-PITCHED SNUFFLE)" "And then another period of frustration - half an hour trying to get a glimpse of the bill." "(SQueaks)" "Oh, it's a platypus:" "Yes:" "The bill looked huge through the endoscope but was really only a centimetre long." "The front feet already had claws." "And then, to our amazement, we saw there were two babies, not one, crammed into the tiny nest." "Thank you." "Three weeks later, we went into the burrow again." "And we found them immediately." "It's incredible." "They'd grown enormously." "Now they were covered in a thin layer of fur." "There were even visitors inside the burrow." "It's a tick." "I think it was a tick." "The ticks are only found on platypus and already they're feeding on the blood of the young ones." "(PLATYPUS SNUFFLES)" "Their bills are now large and very dark." "We think the young are now about six or seven weeks old." "We're eager to see how the various parts of their body have developed." "Their front feet have webbing between the toes." "And on their back foot is the beginnings of a spur." "The smaller one is female." "The larger one has a much bigger spur." "It's obviously a male." "We called him Big Foot." "The nostrils are huge." "We think they're probably used to find the milk patches of the mother." "And here, the smaller one is rubbing the tummy of the larger one, as if it's trying to suckle." "It was a revealing three hours in the burrow." "Nina is spending hours each day by the river bank recording Shy's feeding patterns." "It's late summer on the South Esk, and vast numbers of insects are hatching from the river." "(TRANQUIL MUSIC)" "It's an ideal time for Shy to be feeding her young." "NINA:" "She's just feeding enormously." "She spends 16 hours out in the river." "And she just goes along the river and wherever she is, just feeds." "Unbelievably hungry little female." "(PLAYFUL MUSIC)" "A nursing platypus will consume up to half her body weight in food every 24 hours." "Most of it consists of tiny morsels which she must somehow find and separate from the leaves, mud or gravel on the riverbed." "When she gets to the surface, she chews with a sideways motion of her grinding pads, separating out and swallowing the food." "In a single feeding session, she may dive up to a thousand times." "(PLAYFUL MUSIC CONTINUES)" "(BIRD CRIES)" "(FROGS CALL)" "Tonight, the team plan to go into Shy's burrow once again." "(REGULAR BEEPING)" "So, while Nina tracks Shy to make sure she's out feeding, the team drills a new hole into her nesting chamber." "This time, they're installing a tiny remote-controlled camera that will be able to film Shy feeding her young without disturbing her." "Illumination comes from miniature infra-red lights, which she can't see." "And as well as the camera, there's a microphone to pick up sound inside the burrow." "That's the big one." "There..." "Oh:" "(Growls)" "The babies are now about 13 weeks old." "Their eyes are open, their bills are fully formed, and their coats have grown thick." "While Big Foot plays with tree roots in the roof of the chamber, the smaller one is perhaps getting ready to take on solid food." "Nina warns that Shy is on her way back to the burrow." "As she approaches the nesting chamber, she unblocks the earthen plugs which she set there to protect her young." "Then she's through into the chamber." "(Platypuses growl)" "Here we go:" "(Babies suckle)" "Within minutes, the eager young are greedily suckling from their mother's milk patches." "(Platypus snuffles)" "But the team is about to see behaviour that no-one has ever seen before." "That is amazing." "DAVID:" "The young stopped suckling and then began to rub their mother's bill." "Are they taking food from her, perhaps getting a taste of those little animals that they themselves will be eating in the next few weeks?" "Or are they drinking her saliva - maybe getting some of the bacteria that will strengthen their immune system?" "We don't really know what we're seeing in these extraordinary pictures." "Soon Shy has had enough." "She busily rebuilds the nest around her young." "(SERENE MUSIC)" "And then she's gone, leaving a tangle of tails and bills behind her." "10 days later, on watch as usual beside Shy's pool," "Markus and Nina spot one of the young platypuses in the water." "Big Foot, the male, has emerged from the nest." "The team watches, enthralled, as the last chapter in the drama they've been following for months unfolds." "Big Foot needs no tuition from his mother." "Minutes after his emergence, he's swimming and foraging expertly along the bank." "He asserts his independence swiftly." "Within a few weeks, he's travelling well upstream from his mother's pool." "Soon, he'll have to leave this rich feeding ground." "He's trespassing on the home range of older, larger males." "(PEACEFUL MUSIC)" "DAVID:" "As Big Foot begins his journey of life, our journey of discovery is coming to an end." "We know nothing of what he does in the next couple of years." "In fact, I feel that we've only just scratched the surface in understanding the platypus, one of the most mysterious animals on earth." "(TRANQUIL MUSIC)" "(PLATYPUS GROWLS)"