Henry Burrell

Henry (Harry) James Burrell OBE (19 January 1873 – 29 July 1945) was an Australian naturalist who specialised in the study of monotremes. He was the first person to successfully keep the platypus in captivity and was a lifelong collector of specimens and contributor of journal articles on monotremes.

Henry James Burrell was born at Rushcutters Bay, Sydney, the fourth son of Douglas and Sarah Rose Burrell (née Stacey). He had some schooling but had an itinerant lifestyle during which he spent some years as a vaudeville comedian. In 1901 he married Susan Emily Naegueli, a 42-year-old divorcee, and settled at Caermarthen station, Manilla, New South Wales, which was home to Susan's parents.

He set up a small native zoo and became interested in the platypus, Ornithorhynchus anatinus, which he had been told could not be kept in captivity. He spent much of his time studying the platypus on the rivers surrounding the station: the Namoi, Manilla and Macdonald. He captured some specimens and managed to keep them alive in a portable artificial habitat of his own devising, which he christened a "platypusary". He made the first exhibition of the platypus at the Moore Park Zoological Gardens (moved and renamed Taronga Zoological Gardens in 1917) in 1910, and with Ellis Stanley Joseph he took the first live platypuses to be seen outside Australia to the United States in 1922. He was also the first person to successfully keep a baby platypus in captivity.

His interest extended to the other monotremes, the echidnas, and he made a film showing the habits of both monotremes. He made recordings of their vocalizations and contributed articles on the monotremes to the Australian Encyclopedia.

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