Easily the best I've seen (small sample, but it's brilliant). Why the outdoor "palace of marbles" was built 20 years later is a complete mystery to me.
To accommodate the growing numbers and have a few more exhibits for breeding. I understand it is not attractive (to Zoochatters, I would imagine that the general public don't really care) but is an effective exhibit and has seen breeding recently.
I'm just taking a guess here but they don't breed regularly and I think most of the ones in captivity would have come from the wild (rescued as well as caught). It would make sense that if any zoos held them then it would be the ones within platypus range.
Do you know if Taronga, Healesville and Melbourne have had platypus continuously in the time that they've held them. I assume in the first few years they would have been an on and off again display.
I live a long way from the coast and have seen them in the Murray River near me. They are a long way down the west flowing rivers as well.
the "eastern coast" doesn't refer to the actual coastline, it refers to the area down the eastern side of the country. Have a look at a distribution map for platypus and you'll see what PAT means.
have a read of this (rather pretentious) 2005 article about the Platypusary: Platypusary, Healesville Sanctuary - Reviews - Arts - Entertainment
Referring back to Shirokuma's posts about Adelaide not having platypus, Adelaide now owns Warrawong wildlife sanctuary which is home to platypus and is not too far from the city.
There has been a discussion of the lack of a decent zoo in Las Vegas in another thread and the supposed plan to open a branch facility of the Irwin's Australia Zoo came up. I found this article claiming that the Las Vegas Australia Zoo would have platypuses. Australia Zoo in talks over Las Vegas crocodile oasis | News.com.au Does anybody think that the Irwin family-Australia Zoo would actually have the pull to do that, assuming that the Las Vegas project ever got built, or is it just public relations bologna?
I don't think that article is actually claiming the proposed zoo would have platypus, it was just quoting the mayor naming Australian animals: "The zoo would be a limited zoo. It's an Australian zoo . . . we're just going to have wombats and platypuses and koalas and crocodiles." Given that Australia Zoo itself doesn't have platypus I wouldn't give it much credence. Having said that, I suppose Steve could potentially have swung things to get platypus over there (he was very popular!) but Terri....well, not so much.
Since I'm European, I'm no expert, but I've seen the platypus on 2 out of 3 visits in Sydney Aquarium and when I was in Taronga, I did not see any platypusses at all, altho the exhibit in the platypus house was temporarely empty because of broken glass, so I had only half chances to begin with. I visited Lone Pine, but since it was back in 2008, there wasn't a platypus back then. There is one now though.
