Winston the platypus was shipped to England. Has his mystery death at sea been solved?

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Was Winston the platypus really killed by a depth charge from a German submarine? Did Penelope escape the Bronx Zoo to avoid the advances of the sulky Australian called Cecil?

These are not ordinary whodunnits, but mysteries ripped from the pages of history surrounding Australia’s long history of sending platypuses abroad by sea to build bonds with allies.

A glass lantern slide (hand-coloured) of a baby platypus – a puggle – taken by naturalist and zoo owner David Fleay. No known images of Winston exist.

Now a team of University of Sydney students has uncovered the truth behind an 80-year-long cover-up that protected the identity of the real killer of a platypus named Winston.

“We have proved the propagandists wrong,” student Paul Zaki said.

Winston was one of the saddest chapters in the history of platypus diplomacy, which often resulted in the death of these unique animals on foreign soil.

Described by an American zoologist as “literally the strangest animal”, platypuses have generated headlines and hype across the world and Australia.

University of Sydney students Paul Zaki, Angela Liang, Ewan Cowan, and Holly Butler, with Australian Museum head of archives and library Dr Vanessa Finney (second right).

The failed attempt by the Bronx Zoo in New York to mate two platypuses, Cecil and Penelope, was covered with a fervour associated with Hollywood super-couples such as Brangelina or Bennifer.

Cecil was spurned, said one publication. He was getting nowhere fast, said another. “Plans for Platypus Wedding Postponed”, reported the Kalgoorlie Miner, and in all-caps underneath: Penelope does not like Cecil. Penelope was described as a “brazen hussy”, and accused of faking a pregnancy.

First, Winston’s backstory.

In 1943, the UK’s wartime prime minister, Winston Churchill, asked Australia for a platypus to add to his menagerie of exotic pets. He was advised by his closest friend, wartime minister for information Brendan Bracken, that the Australian government had suspended its “much-cherished law about preventing platypus[es] from leaving the country”.

The page from the logbook on the day that Winston was found dead.

With a platypus set to arrive, Bracken urged Churchill to send his cat Nelson into exile. “That pussy could (and probably would) slaughter the platypus in a few fell minutes,” Bracken wrote.

And so it was that in the midst of WWII on October 2, 1943, a young and healthy platypus, named Winston for his future owner, set sail in a custom-built platypussary for England.

Ewan Cowan, Holly Butler, Angela Liang and Zaki reveal that Winston’s death was kept secret during the war, and document the fate of other platypuses sent abroad by sea.

As part of a cross-disciplinary course, a dozen students worked for 12 weeks at the Australian Museum with its head of archives, Dr Vanessa Finney, to digitise and explore a newly acquired collection, a bequest from the naturalist, zoo owner and educator David Fleay (1907-1993).

David Fleay, a serious scientist and a showman, with a platypus in an image bequeathed to the museum.

It included the ship’s logbook and glass lantern slides made by Fleay, a fanatical photographer.

Finney said Fleay had been a serious scientist and showman with an eye for a great story. “Behind that was a serious intent to promote and protect Australian wildlife,” she said.

Fleay had caught six puggles and chose Winston for his namesake. The young platypus was a “little beauty” and possessed “all the attributes of self-possession and good condition so essential to the trials ahead”.

Working with Finney, the students discovered who and what was really to blame for Winston’s death at sea on November 4, 1943.

The students of history and philosophy of science reviewed the logbook kept by a midshipman entrusted with caring for Winston at sea. He recorded the temperature of the air, food and water several times a day, what he was fed and his condition.

Sometimes Winston was fed egg custard to supplement worms and grubs.

On Sunday, October 3, the log reports the animal was in good condition and eating all its food.

But two days short of reaching his destination, as the students report, “Disaster Struck”. On Saturday, November 4, the midshipman notes, “Platypus found dead in water”.

Writing to Australian prime minister John Curtin, Churchill said he “was grieved to tell you that the platypus you kindly sent me has died. The loss is a great disappointment to me.”

He wrote that the Royal College of Surgeons was anxious to have Winston’s remains stuffed because another platypus had been lost in the Blitz.

In correspondence between Australia and the UK, there was speculation that a depth charge by a German submarine could have killed Winston. “With such a timid animal that only a little noise would be harmful, especially if his vitality had lowered by lessened food intake,” an official wrote.

By analysing the temperatures in the logbook, the students concluded that Winston was probably killed by heat stress, and exacerbated by a reduction in his food and the reverberations from an explosion.

Butler said platypuses eat a lot for their size. Winston’s rations had been reduced from about 700 worms a day to 600 a day because the crew feared the 50,000 worms wouldn’t last the trip otherwise.

Zaki said research on transporting platypuses said they shouldn’t be exposed to constant temperatures above 27 degrees, yet for the week when they were crossing the equator, Winston was kept in conditions where the air and water were much higher.

Platypuses mostly live in environments where the temperature is 20 degrees and below. Above 25 degrees, they can’t regulate their body temperature. Above 34 degrees can be fatal for the species.

“These temperatures don’t seem extreme for us humans. They’re very high for platypuses,” says their report.

In their online series, the students tell the full story of the story of platypus diplomacy.

Cowan said platypuses were seen as very exotic from the early days of colonial settlement. “They were considered paradoxical. Because they have a bill of a duck, they look like an otter and had a tail like a beaver.” And they lay eggs.

Liang said they were so strange that scientists assumed the first specimens (taxidermied) sent overseas in the late 1790s were a hoax. “Like a stitched-up artefact,” she said.

Finney said the platypuses caused a sensation wherever they were sent. The courtship of Penelope and Cecil, the “only two duck-billed platypuses” alive in the United States, was reported like a Mills & Boon romance by newspapers from 1947 to 1957.

The Herald’s correspondent Ross Campbell covered their New York debut. It was attended by the Australian ambassador and a gang of media, including 20 press photographers, journalists and TV crews. At one stage, it was reported that Penelope was faking a pregnancy to get more food.

The students report that Fleay said Penelope was “shamefully maligned” – rather, she was “always an ordinary, straightforward lady platypus”.

Penelope escaped from the Bronx Zoo in 1957. The New York Times reported that far from being lovesick, Penelope was sick of Cecil.

Desperate to escape, she did what was once considered impossible. She forced her body under heavy mesh wires, and headed for freedom and anonymity.

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