The mystery of Winston Churchill's dead platypus was finally solved

bbc.com

57 points·benbreen··12 comments

Worth reading just for the discovery of the word “platypusary”

I'm an even bigger fan of "platypups"!

Also "platypus attendant"

But in the end the cause of death didn't bring me any comfort

The lede is buried, tl;dr: During WWII, a platypus named Winston Churchill was shipped from Australia to the UK (on behalf of its namesake). On the last leg of the journey, after the panama canal, the platypus nursery got too hot (above 27 degrees Celsius) and the platypus died.

thanks, I was trying to find that even though I read most of the article lol

Crazy that 27 C is deadly. I imagine most of Australia is hotter than that during any given summer.

But does the water reach 27°C during Australian summers, or just the air? Water will remain cooler than air for a long time, as anyone who's jumped into a swimming pool in summer knows. It was the sustained water temperature of 27°C that was the deadly issue for Winston the platypus.

The platypus was called Winston.

Winston Churchill was the British Prime Minister at the time.

The two should not be confused.

"platypusary"

-note to self, do a google image search when I'm no longer at work for "platypusary".

Why can you use Hacker News but not Google Images at work?

A platypus? Winston the platypus?

That is a series of words I never thought I'd see together

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