When mating, platypus put their bill on each other’s tail, like they’re in a trance, in what filmmaker Pete Walsh dubbed the “platypus love donut.”
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TRANSCRIPT
- [Narrator] I was following Scoot upriver and we came across a female grooming.
She was lying back scratching, releasing her scent into the water.
And then I realized it was Zoom.
All that time she was missing, but here she was, upriver.
Scoot had been following the smell of a female he'd never met, and he'd taken me along as his wingman.
Mating doesn't happen immediately.
There's a fair bit of foreplay for platypus.
The females are really testing the males.
Scoot might've been from the wrong side of the tracks, but it felt like Zoom had finally met a male that she was happy to mate with.
They put their bill on each other's tail like they're in a trance.
I call it the platypus love donut.
