What do they eat?

The platypus usually lives alone, and numbers are most often limited by the availability of food, mainly in the form of tadpoles,water bugs, shrimp, and swimming beetles. When not foraging they spend their time in their burrows which they build in the banks of creeks, rivers, or ponds.

They feed in both slow-moving and rapid parts of creeks and rivers but seem to prefer areas with cobbles and gravel. At times, they use rocky crevices and stream debris as shelters, or they burrow under the roots of vegetation near the waterway. Hence, the ideal habitat for the species includes a river or a creek with earth banks and native vegetation that provides shading of the waterway and cover near the bank.