High fine threatened
Police in Australia are looking for train passengers with platypus
Platypuses have a broad, stumpy tail reminiscent of a beaver and a broad, flat beak. The police in Australia are currently looking for such an animal. (symbol image)
© AAP / Imago Images
In Queensland, Australia, the law prohibits the removal of platypuses from the wild. Two men nevertheless took one of the animals. The police are now looking for the two strangers.
Police in Australia are looking for two people who were traveling on the train with a rare, wild platypus. The passengers got on a train with the specimen wrapped in a towel, the police said on Thursday. Officials believe the platypus was stolen from its natural habitat in northern Queensland and are asking for a “speedy return.”
Platypus stolen from natural habitat
Surveillance camera photos show a man in flip-flops carrying the platypus – about the size of a kitten – under his arm on a train station north of Brisbane. He and his companion wrapped the platypus in a towel, “petted it and showed it to the other passengers,” police said.
“We are concerned for the welfare of the animal as it has been taken from its natural habitat,” Deputy Queensland Police Commissioner Scott Knowles told reporters. But the police were also concerned about the animal’s potential adoptive parents: Male platypuses have poisonous spurs that cause great pain when they burrow into human flesh.
By law, removing platypuses from the wild in Queensland is illegal and can result in hefty fines. Platypuses have a broad, stumpy tail reminiscent of a beaver and a broad, flat beak. Native to Australia’s freshwater rivers, they belong to the monotremes — a rare group of egg-laying mammals.