The Australian Conservation Foundation is asking people to become citizen scientists by getting outside, spotting one of the unique creatures and documenting the find to bring researchers the latest data.

Central Victorian naturalists might want to head along the Campaspe River near Axedale - a known platypus habitat - or any creek or river near them.

The platypus has a wide distribution across the east coast - from northern Queensland to southern Tasmania - but there isn't a lot of data about which specific waterways the quirky creatures live in, or where populations might be in decline or where there have been local extinctions.

Filling these knowledge gaps is a big job, so researchers are asking for the community's help.

Wetland conservation researcher Gilad Bino said his team are trying to understand how platypus numbers are coping throughout the country, particularly in the wake of unusual conditions.

The spread of platypus numbers historically spanned a much larger area but over the past 200 years extinction events have occurred, Dr Bino said, particularly in the example of South Australia.

"We're trying to understand how platypuses are coping with these sequences of extreme events which are not optimal conditions obviously - so we're tracking the population over time," He said.

Dr Bino's team have looked back on old newspaper records which document quite large numbers of the creatures as opposed to the rare sightings nowadays.

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"The problem with the platypus is because it's such a cryptic species, it comes out at night and it spends almost all of its time in the water, it's really hard to monitor and count and even just observe," he said.

"Platypuses are an amazing Australian animal, they're endemic to Australia.

"They're part of the monotreme family, they're an egg laying mammal along with the echidna and their evolutionary history makes them very unique with some really interesting characteristics.

"They have venomous spurs, they walk more like a crocodile than a mammal so they have these really unique features and they're highly dependent on fresh water rivers."

The Australian Conservation Foundation has put together a map that shows the species' range and the locations of past sightings. The organisation is asking people to identify priority areas near them and then log any sightings with the Platy-project this September.

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