The story of the platypus Churchill received as a gift during World War II (and the truth about its mysterious end).

In 1943, a camouflaged ship departed from Australia bound for England, carrying a top-secret passenger: a platypus.

The rare animal was named Winston, in honor of its future owner: the then British Prime Minister Winston Churchill (1874-1965). It was an unusual gift from a country desperately trying to ingratiate itself with the Prime Minister.

And there was a very strong reason behind the initiative. The Second World War (1939-1945) was spreading to the Pacific, reaching the very gates of Australia.

But, days before reaching his destination, Winston the platypus was found dead in the water of the cage built especially for the journey, amidst the war raging on the seas around him.

Fearing a possible diplomatic incident, not only the death, but the very existence of the exotic animal was kept secret. It was dissected and discreetly filed away in the office of his namesake.

But this did not prevent rumors that he had been yet another victim of the Nazis, due to a possible collision with a German submarine.

The cause of Winston's death remained a mystery for decades... until now.

Two Winstons and a war

The platypus has always fascinated the world — and with good reason.

The animal is one of only five species of monotremes, a group that includes the only mammals that lay eggs instead of giving birth to live young.

The platypus is venomous, and its unusual appearance—with a duck-like face and feet, an otter-like body, and a beaver-like tail—led European naturalists to believe for years that the animal was an elaborate hoax, a taxidermy trick.

Churchill was an avid collector of rare and exotic animals. For him, the platypus was a very intriguing creature, so much so that he wanted at least one—maybe six?—for his collection.

In 1943, he discussed his desire with the Australian Foreign Minister, H.V. Evatt (1894-1965).

In Evatt's view, the ban on animal exports imposed by Australia and the notorious difficulty of transporting them, especially on such a long journey, were merely challenges to be overcome.

Australia felt increasingly abandoned by the United Kingdom in the face of the growing Japanese threat. And if platypuses could help Churchill respond more favorably to Canberra's requests for support, so be it.

Australian conservationist David Fleay (1907-1993) was called upon to help with this mission. But he proved less receptive.

"Imagine a man with Churchill's responsibilities, with humanity in distress in Europe and Asia, finding time to think about and even desire half a dozen platypuses," he wrote in his 1980 book Paradoxical Platypus .

Fleay's accounts indicate that he managed to convince politicians to reduce the number of animals to be transported to the United Kingdom. Of six, only one platypus would be sent as a gift to the Prime Minister.

Shortly afterwards, the young platypus Winston was captured in a river near the Australian city of Melbourne.

A sophisticated cage was built for him, with burrows lined with hay and fresh water from an Australian stream. A menu of 50,000 worms and duck egg cream was prepared for his enjoyment.

An assistant was hired to attend to all his needs during the trip, which would last 45 days. And, on the other side of the planet, Churchill was preparing for his arrival.

By the 1940s, it was already known that platypuses were voracious animals.

The legend surrounding the species' voracious appetite was so widespread that British authorities drafted an advertisement offering money to children who caught worms for such a special immigrant.

Winston the platypus crossed the Pacific to the American continent, went through the Panama Canal, and reached the Atlantic Ocean. It was there that the tragedy occurred.

In a letter to Evatt, Churchill reported with dismay that the platypus "kindly" sent to him had died on the final leg of the journey.

"His loss is a great frustration for me," lamented the prime minister.

The mission's failure was kept secret for years to avoid public outcry. But, over time, reports of the animal's death began to appear in newspapers.

The press claimed that the ship had encountered a German submarine and that the platypus was killed after being violently shaken by a series of explosions.

"A small animal, endowed with a beak full of nerves and extremely sensitive, capable of detecting even the delicate movements of a mosquito crawling through streams in the darkness of night, cannot cope with the enormities caused by man, such as violent explosions," Fleay wrote decades later.

"Clearly, were it not for the misfortunes of war, the small, beautiful, vibrant, and healthy platypus would have made history as the first of its kind to settle in England."

But this story raised suspicions for a long time. And, for doctoral student Harrison Croft, it was also irresistible.

Therefore, in 2024, he embarked on his own journey: the search for the true destiny of the platypus Winston.

Mystery solved

By consulting archives in the Australian capital, Canberra, and in London, the student from Monash University in Australia found a series of records from the ship's crew. These included an interview with the platypus caretaker, who was responsible for keeping Winston alive.

"A sort of autopsy was performed, and he was very meticulous," Croft countered. "He was absolutely certain that there had been no explosion, that everything was calm and quiet on board."

Croft wasn't the only one intrigued by the story. In Sydney, Australia, another team was investigating Winston's life.

David Fleay's personal collection was donated to the Australian Museum, whose staff were eager to know if it would hold answers about the cause of the animal's death.

"You'd go up in the elevators and some doctor of mammalogism would ask: 'What evidence is there that Winston died from depth charge detonations?'" the museum's archive administrator, Robert Dooley, told the BBC. "That intrigued people for a long time."

With the help of a team of interns from the University of Sydney, they set out to digitize all of Fleay's records in an attempt to study them.

In the logbook of the platypus's handler, the students found evidence that its rations were being reduced throughout the trip because some of the worms began to die.

But it was the water and air temperatures, recorded daily at eight in the morning and six in the afternoon, that held the key to solving the mystery.

The readings were taken at two of the coldest times of day. However, as the ship crossed the Equator for about a week, temperatures rose well above 27°C.

Today we know that this temperature is the safe limit for platypus travel.

The benefit of hindsight and 80 years of scientific research on the species led the University of Sydney team to determine that Winston, the platypus, was essentially cooked alive.

It's true that the underwater collision theory can't be definitively ruled out. But they claim that the impact of high temperatures over a prolonged period, by itself, would have been enough to kill the animal.

"It's much easier to blame the Germans than to say that we didn't feed him enough, or that we didn't regulate his temperature correctly," one of the interns, Ewan Cowan, explained to the BBC.

"The story depends entirely on who tells it," adds Paul Zaki, another intern who participated in the investigation.

Orgies of love and broken hearts.

Australia was not deterred by the failed initial attempt at platypus diplomacy. The country would try to transport the platypus again in 1947.

Fleay was ecstatic to be the first to successfully breed a platypus in captivity. His feat would not be repeated until 50 years later.

He convinced the Australian government to allow the Bronx Zoo in New York to receive three creatures, in an attempt to deepen relations between Australia and the United States.

Unlike Winston's secret voyage across the Pacific Ocean, the journey of the trio of platypuses — Betty, Penelope, and Cecil — attracted enormous attention.

They landed in Boston, in the United States, with great fanfare. From there, accounts from the time say that the trio was escorted by limousine to New York.

Upon their arrival, the Australian ambassador was waiting to feed them the first ceremonial worm.

Betty died shortly after arriving. But Penelope and Cecil quickly became celebrities.

Crowds eagerly awaited the arrival of the animals. A wedding was planned, and the sensationalist press followed their every move.

Platypuses are solitary animals. But in New York, the promise is that they will become lovers.

Cecil was in love, but Penelope, apparently, was not attracted to him.

The press portrayed Penelope as "shameless": "one of those audacious women who like to have a male at their disposal."

Finally, in 1953, the couple had four days of encounters described disconcertingly as "love orgies that lasted all night," fueled by "copious quantities of freshwater crabs and worms."

Penelope soon began building a nest, and the world eagerly awaited her offspring. It would be a tremendous scientific achievement: the second platypus litter in captivity and the first outside of Australia.

For four months, Penelope was treated like a princess, receiving double the ration, until zookeepers inspected her nest in front of a crowd of excited journalists.

But they found no baby. In the nest, there was only Penelope, seemingly unhappy.

She was summarily accused of faking her pregnancy to get more worms and avoid seeing Cecil.

"It was all a scandal," Cowan says. Penelope's reputation never recovered.

Years later, in 1957, Penelope disappeared from her enclosure, triggering a search and rescue mission that lasted weeks. Ultimately, the zoo declared her "presumably lost and probably dead."

A day after the search for Penelope was called off, Cecil died. The press diagnosed his death as having been caused by a "broken heart."

The couple's death put an end to any possibility of a future for the platypus's diplomacy.

The Bronx Zoo attempted to repeat the exchange with other platypuses in 1958. But the demanding animals survived for less than a year, and Australia decided to tighten the laws prohibiting their export.

The only two platypuses that have left the country since then have lived at the San Diego Zoo in the American state of California since 2019.