Where is the Platypus's habitat and what food do they eat?

Answer 1

Platypuses live throughout eastern coastal Australia and its island state of Tasmania, particularly within heavily wooded and protected regions. They are found from the cooler sub-alpine areas in the south, such as Victoria and the Tasmanian highlands, north through New South Wales to tropical far north Queensland. Platypuses live in bushland as well as tropical, sub-tropical and temperate rainforests. Platypuses live in burrows that they dig on the banks of freshwater creeks, rivers, lakes and dams.

They spend their time searching for food in rivers and lakes, and are thus considered semi-aquatic. Platypuses are carnivores. They are predators; they eat small water animals such as aquatic insect larvae of caddisflies, mayflies and two-winged flies, fresh water shrimp, annelid worms, yabbies and crayfish. During summer, they eat more than during winter, in order to build up reserves of fat.

Answer 2

Few animals in the wild eat platypuses, because they mainly hunt underwater and live in hidden shelters, from tropical north regions to the sub-alpine and cold temperate rainforest areas of southern Australia. Introduced species such as Red foxes prey on younger platypuses, and feral cats are another platypus predator.

Natural predators of the platypus include snakes, water rats, goannas, spotted quolls, eels, hawks, owls and eagles. In the north of its range, dingoes are another predator. Lower platypus numbers in far northern Australia are possibly due to predation by crocodiles. On occasion, large freshwater eels (which may be twice the length of a platypus) have been thought to eat platypuses.

Platypuses themselves eat invertebrates such as annelid worms, insect larvae and tiny crustaceans. They do not eat vertebrates such as frogs or fish.