How the mystery of the died ornithorynque of Winston Churchill was finally resolved

In 1943, a camouflaged ship started from Australia to England carrying a secret secret cargo – a young ornithorynque.

Appointed according to its potential owner, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, the rare monotremus was an unprecedented gift from a country desperately trying to create favor when the Second World War extended into the Pacific and arrived at its door.

But days of the arrival of Winston, while war was raging in the seas surrounding it, the puggle was found dead in the water of its specially manufactured “platypus”.

Fearing a potential diplomatic incident, the death of Winston – with its very existence – was swept under the carpet.

He was kept, drunk and quietly put in the office of his name name, with rumors that he died of Nazi-Submarine whisper, whispered gently in ether.

The mystery of whom, or of what has really killed him has escaped the world since – so far.

The world has always been fascinated by the ornithorynque. A weighted mammal with the face and feet of a duck, a otter -shaped body and an inspiration tail of the beaver, many thought that the creature was an elaborate hoax; A taxidermia tip.

For Churchill, a collector passionate about rare and exotic animals, the ornithorynque intrigue only made him more desperate to have one – or six – for his menagerie.

And in 1943, he said as much to the Australian Minister of Foreign Affairs, HV ‘Doc’ Evatt.

In the eyes of Evatt, the fact that his country prohibited the export of creatures – or that they were notoriously difficult to transport and that none had never survived a trip so long – were only challenges to overcome.

Australia had felt more and more abandoned by the homeland while the Japanese were closer and closer – and if a group of plans of plans would help Churchill to react more favorably to Canberra support requests, then too bad.

The conservationist David Fleay – who was invited to help the mission – was less ready.

“Imagine that every man carries the responsibilities that Churchill has made, with humanity on the rack in Europe and Asia, by finding the time to think even, not to mention, half a dozen duck plans,” he wrote in his paradoxical book in 1980.

On Mr. Fleay’s account, he managed to speak to the six -seat politicians of a ship to one, and the young Winston was captured in a river near Melbourne shortly after.

An elaborate platypusaire – with burrows bordered by hay and Australian Australian water – has been built for him; A menu of 50,000 to – and duck egg cream like a treat – has been prepared; And a attendant was hired to wait for all his needs throughout the 45 -day trip.

Through the Pacific, through the Panama Canal and in the Atlantic Ocean, Winston went – before the tragedy strikes.

In a letter to Evatt, Churchill said it was “afflicted” to point out that the ornithorynque “kindly” sent to him died in the last section of the trip.

“His loss is a great disappointment for me,” he said.

The failure of the mission was kept secret for years, to avoid any public outcry. But ultimately, reports on the disappearance of Winston would begin to appear in the newspapers. The ship had met a German submarine, they said, and the ornithorynque had been shaken to death in the middle of an explosion dam.

“A small animal equipped with a draft supervisory bill, capable of detecting even the delicate movements of a breathtaking mosquitoes on the stockings of the stream in the darkness of the night, cannot expect to face artificial enormities such as violent explosions,” wrote Mr. Fley, decades later.

“It was so obvious that, but for the misfortunes of the war, a little flourishing and healthy ornithorynque would have created history by being number one of its kind to settle in England.”

“It’s a tempting story, right?” Doctoral student Harrison Croft says to the BBC.

But he was the one who has long raised suspicion.

And so last year, Mr. Croft Entering his own trip: a search for truth.

According to the archives in Canberra and London, the student of Monash University found a lot of files from the crew of the ship, including an interview with the ornithologist-storage attendant responsible for keeping Winston alive.

“They made a kind of post-mortem, and it was very special. It was very certain that there was no explosion, that everything was very calm and calm on board,” said Croft.

At State Away, another Sydney team also examined the life of Winston. David Fleay’s personal collection had been given to the Australian museum, and the staff of the whole building was desperate to know if he had answers.

“You were driving in elevators and a Mammalogy doctor … (would ask)” What evidence of archives is it that Winston died of in-depth detonations? “” “Museum’s archives director Robert Dooley told the BBC.

“It’s something that has intrigued people for a long time.”

With the help of a team of trainees from the University of Sydney, they began to digitize all Fleay records in order to discover it.

Even from the 1940s, people knew that ornithologistsist were voracious eaters. The legend of the appetite of the species was so great that the British authorities wrote an announcement offering to pay young boys to catch verses and deliver them to feed Winston when he arrived.

In the logbook of the ornithorynque attendant, the trainees found evidence that its rations on the way have decreased while some lines have started to perish.

But it was the temperatures of water and air, which had been noted at 8 a.m. and 6 p.m. every day, which held the key to solving the mystery.

These readings were taken at two of the coldest points of the day, and yet the ship crossed the equator over about a week, the registered temperatures climbed far beyond 27c-what we know now is the safe threshold for ornithologist-stingy trips.

With the advantage of the decline – and an additional 80 years of scientific research on the species – the team of the University of Sydney determined that Winston was essentially lively cooked.

Although they cannot definitively exclude the underwater history of the shock of the shell, they say that the impact of these high temperatures prolonged alone would have been enough to kill Winston.

“It is much easier to simply modify the blame on the Germans, rather than saying that we do not nourish it enough, or we do not properly regulate its temperature,” Ewan Cowan told BBC.

“The story depends completely on who tells the story,” adds Paul Zaki.

In order not to be dissuaded by his first attempted diplomacy of the ornithorynque, Australia would try in 1947.

Given the realization of the successful selection of a captivity ornithorynque for the first time – a feat that would not be reproduced for 50 years – Mr. Fleay convinced the Australian government to let the Bronx zoo have three of the creatures in order to deepen links with the United States.

Unlike Winston’s secret trip through the Pacific, this trip drew huge attention. Betty, Penelope and Cecil accosted Boston with a fanfare, before the trio was escorted via Limousine in New York, where the Australian ambassador was waiting to feed them the first ceremonial worm.

Betty would die shortly after arriving, but Penelope and Cecil quickly became celebrities. Crowds have requested an overview of the animals. A wedding was planned. Tabloids are obsessed with each of their movements.

Ornithorians are solitary creatures, but New York had been promised lovers. And while Cecil was in love with love, Penelope was apparently fed up with love. In the media, she was painted as a “cheeky shell”, “one of those impertinent women who like to keep a male on a chain”.

Until 1953, that is to say that the pair had a four -day adventure – rather describing as “orgies of love all night” – fueled by “large quantities of crayfish and worms”.

Unfortunately, Penelope started to nest, and the world enthusiastically awaited his platypups, which were to be a massive scientific stage – Only the second rose in captivity and the first outside Australia.

After four months of princess treatment and double rations for Penelope, the zoo guards checked his nest in front of a crowd of excited journalists.

But they did not find any baby – just a peel -in -air penelope, who was briefly accused of having simulated his pregnancy to get more worms and less Cecil.

“It was a whole scandal,” said Mr. Cowan – whose reputation of Penelope never recovered.

Years later, in 1957, she would disappear from her enclosure, triggering a research and rescue mission of several weeks which led to the zoo declaring it “presumed lost and probably dead”.

One day after the announcement of the Penelope hunting, Cecil died that the media diagnosed as a “broken heart”.

The pair was set up with the real couple for diplomacy in ornithorynque.

Although the Bronx zoo would try to reproduce the exchange with more nuclei in 1958, the finnicky animals lasted less than a year, and Australia quickly tightened the laws prohibiting their export. The only two who have left the country since has lived at the San Diego zoo since 2019.