‘We’ve never seen a platypus lay an egg’: sniffer dogs to aid researchers by detecting occupied burrows

Wildlife detection dog officer Naomi Hodgens has been working with Kip, a six-year-old kelpie cross, to detect the scent of a live platypus. Photograph: Zoos Victoria

Zoos Victoria is training sniffer dogs to detect live platypus in their burrows as part of a research project to determine how the monotremes look after their young.

The dogs were taught to recognise the odour of a platypus using scent-capturing polymer tubes which absorbed the smell of platypus sleeping in their nest boxes at Healesville Sanctuary. The tubes were then placed in the field for dogs to find.