Platypuses rescued during the severe drought in the ACT six years ago have finally got back to what counts as platypus normal life.
They spent months in captivity in a zoo but, once returned to old waterways, they seemed to remember old habits.
Their drama started as the pools at the Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve dried to dust in the great drought of 2019. Seven platypuses, estimated at the time to be more than half of the population at Tidbinbilla were taken and housed at Taronga Zoo in Sydney.
Five were eventually returned to the wild, but researchers from the University of NSW didn't know whether months in captivity would affect their ability to re-establish themselves, so they tagged and tracked them.
It turns out that the egg-laying mammals' old habits died hard. They "resumed normal movement patterns and settled back into familiar parts of the waterway within days of their release," the researchers from the University of NSW said.
Most females repeatedly returned to the same favourite ponds, while the lone male ranged more widely, behaviour, according to the researchers, consistent with natural differences between male and female platypuses. They quickly relocated productive feeding habitat after months away.
The leader of the research Gilad Bino said the findings were important evidence that rescuing "can be an effective conservation tool for platypuses threatened by increasingly frequent and severe droughts.
"As we take a more active role in protecting platypuses, one critical piece of the puzzle is understanding how animals cope with rescue during an environmental crisis and return once conditions improve," Dr Bino said.
"Once returned, we found that these five platypuses quickly settled back into familiar areas and resumed the kinds of movement patterns we'd expect from healthy wild animals.
"This research tells us that emergency rescue is a viable tool, meaning we are better prepared for when platypuses need our help in the future."
The study followed the platypuses for up to 18 months after they were returned to the Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve following their five months in temporary care at Taronga.
As climate change drives more frequent and severe droughts across Australia, the researchers said that emergency rescue and return could become an increasingly important conservation tool for vulnerable freshwater wildlife.
Platypuses were listed as being "near threatened" by CSIRO. A study by the UNSW and the Taronga Conservation Society Australia found that platypus numbers had almost halved since European colonisation.
