Dogs cruise creeks on paddle boards to sniff out and help the vulnerable platypus
Kip the kelpie and Moss the labrador are the newest members of the conservation team at Healesville Sanctuary in Victoria.
Dubbed the "paddle pups", the dogs are trained to help scientists find and track species in the wild.
After working in Gippsland to find elusive Baw Baw frogs, the dogs have graduated to joining their handlers on paddle boards to help track platypuses.
And where many humans struggled to stay afloat, Healesville wildlife detection dog officer La Toya Jamieson said the dogs were excelling.
"We were pleasantly surprised with how quickly they learnt how to manoeuvre themselves around a paddle board in order to detect the platypus and they were just really excited to be doing so," she said.
Healesville scientists hope the dogs will help them better study platypuses in the wild.
The platypus is listed as vulnerable in Victoria and endangered in South Australia, with a loss of habitat and illegal fishing practices among the biggest threats to the species.
Healesville Sanctuary platypus specialist Jessica Thomas said that, despite its status as one of the country's most iconic species, little was known about the platypus.
In more than 100 years of study, Dr Thomas said, no-one had seen a platypus lay an egg.
"It sounds quite basic but it's still a gap in our knowledge bank and I think one of the reasons that we don't know this stuff is that they have that reputation of being very cryptic," she said.
"They spend their time underwater and underground and they're also nocturnal, so they're quite challenging just to observe, let alone study."
The paddle pups allow scientists to study platypuses in the wild with less disruption to their habitat.
"Because of our dogs' incredible sense of smell, we're able to have a better understanding of how these platypus are living and using their environment," Dr Jamieson said.
Dr Jamieson said the aim of using the paddle pups was for scientists to gather data to provide a more complete picture of how platypuses lived in the wild.
"This paddle board has been a game changer for us because we've been working with our detection dogs on platypus for several years now and particularly in the high rainfall years, we'll have a lot of burrows that we simple can't access, which means that our teams haven't been able to survey stretches of the creek system," she said.
The dogs' work comes at an ideal time, with the new Australian Platypus Conservation Centre opening at Healesville.
With the mission to rehabilitate and return sick or injured platypuses to the wild, the $1 million centre includes nine connecting ponds of various depths and water flows, banks for burrowing and clear water.
"This facility has really been designed to replicate some of the natural variation that you see out in the wild habitat," Dr Thomas said.
"It's got lots of earth banks for them to create their own and it's got varied water depths where they can forage in the shallow areas."
The new centre has been tested by resident platypus Millsom, who came to the centre 23 years ago as an orphaned puggle.
Scientists are now hopeful the centre will help them continue their work to understand more about the species.
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