The transfer of a pair of platypus to the United States is being held up by bureaucratic red tape or at least lack of it.
Sydney's Taronga Zoo reached an agreement with San Diego Zoo to exchange some platypus and African Okapi in February.
But federal environment department officials have revealed there are no rules governing the export of the unique Australian egg-laying mammal.
"As far as I know, platypus have not been exported for many, many decades so there's no records of platypus being exported under our current regulatory regime," wildlife trade official Paul Murphy told a Senate committee in Canberra on Tuesday.
"There is an indication on the internet of an export to a New York zoo, I think, but that as I said was many decades ago."
Taronga was drafting conditions for overseas transfer which it would submit to the department for approval.
Mr Murphy doesn't know yet if it would require the platypus to return to Australia at some point in the future.
It was unlikely the animals would be sent to San Diego on a lease arrangement - as is the case with all pandas exhibited outside of China - meaning the American zoo would keep the money it made from exhibiting the platypus.
Mr Murphy said the panda leases were an unusual arrangement, with most zoo exchanges done on a kind of barter system.
The San Diego Zoo had promised to invest in a platypus conservation project in Australia, he said.
