Mysterious death of platypus ‘Winston Churchill’ finally solved after decades

In 1943, in the middle of World War II, Australia became increasingly worried about the Japanese, who kept approaching their land and waters.

Hoping for more support from the United Kingdom, they agreed to send a rather unusual gift to Winston Churchill, the UK’s prime minister at the time.

Churchill was known for his love and collection of exotic animals, and people were aware of his particular fascination with the platypus, a curious creature looking like a mix of a duck, an otter, and a beaver that is also one of only five mammals to lay eggs.

He had furthermore expressed an interest in adding one to his collection.

Australia’s foreign minister at the time, Herbert Vere ‘Doc’ Evatt, agreed to appease Churchill in order to secure support during those worrying times, despite a ban on the export of the creatures and the fact that none had ever survived such a long journey before.

And so, with the help of conservationist David Fleay, the platypus – who was named after his future owner – was sent on his travels.

The journey begins

To make Winston’s journey comfortable, a ‘platypusary’ was built on the ship to mimic his natural habitat as closely as possible and special foods were stocked onboard.

They even went as far as hiring an attendant to take care of him on his 45-day long journey.

But sadly, Winston did not make it and died before reaching his destination.

It was first intended to be kept a secret but reports of the tragedy soon began popping up in the newspapers, where it was claimed that the little creature was shaken to death after the ship had encountered a German U-boat.

Decades later, Fleay wrote: “A small animal equipped with a nerve-packed, super-sensitive bill, able to detect even the delicate movements of a mosquito wriggler on stream bottoms in the dark of night, cannot hope to cope with man-made enormities such as violent explosions.”

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Solving the mystery 

A PhD student named Harrison Croft was intrigued by the story and in 2024 started to dig a little deeper.

Using archives in London and Canberra, he found records from the crew of the ship, which included an interview with the person in charge of taking care of Winston and keeping him alive.

“They did a sort of post-mortem, and he [the platypus minder] was very particular,” Croft explained.

“He was very certain that there was no explosion, that it was all very calm and quiet on board.”

Croft was not the only one interested in this mystery, though, as another group of people at the University of Sydney started investigating the case using the personal collection of Fleay, which had been donated to the Australian Museum.

It is crucial to note that platypuses eat a lot, which is why the rations had been so carefully planned for its long journey.

According to information retrieved from the logbook of Winston’s attendant, portions were decreased as the journey went on as some of the worms began to perish.

However, the team found that this was not what tragically ended the poor creature’s life; instead, it was the water and air temperatures.

The logbook recorded temperatures that were much higher than what is considered safe for a platypus, and so it was concluded that Winston was, essentially, cooked alive while the ship crossed the equator.

Although the team could not discount the original U-boat shell-shock story in its entirety, they were certain that high temperatures would, in the long run, have led to the platypus’ demise.

Ewan Cowan, one of the members of the team at the University of Sydney said: “It’s way easier to just shift the blame on the Germans, rather than say we weren’t feeding it enough or we weren’t regulating its temperature correctly.”

Paul Zaki, Cowan’s colleague, added: “History is totally dependent on who’s telling the story.”

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