What are the main predators of the Duckbill Platypus and where is it in the food chain?
Platypuses have few enemies in the wild, because they mainly live underwater and in hidden shelters, from tropical north regions to the sub-alpine areas of southern Australia. The introduction of red foxes as a predator for rabbits may have had some impact on platypus numbers on the mainland. Feral cats are another platypus predator, but the platypus’s principal enemies are humans. Humans used to hunt them for their fur, but they are now protected. The danger is now not from hunting, but from destruction of their environment. So, technically, we’re not the platypus’s predators because we do not eat them. The platypuses were and are affected by man but not eaten by him. Natural predators of the platypus include snakes, water rats, goannas, spotted quolls, eels, hawks, owls and eagles. In the north of its range, dingoes are another predator and lower platypus numbers in far northern Australia are possibly due to predation by crocodiles.
