Encore: The misfit mammal that defies biological conventions

ABC Listen, podcasts, radio, news, music, and more. Jack Ashby is a British zoologist from Cambridge University's Zoological Museum, who writes very candidly If I sound excited about platypuses, it's because I am. Jack Ashby is fascinated by the utterly distinctive creatures that have evolved on our island continent. But nothing delights him as much as platypuses. And it is platypuses, by the way, not platypi, because it's a Greek word and not platypi.

The British, when they first came to Australia, were confounded by the a creature that has a body like a mole, a bill like a duck, and feet like an otter, that lays eggs, and yet suckles its young, Well all that just threw out all their systems of animal classification out of way. And the way they and the rest of the world dealt with their confusion was to all too often disparage Australia's wildlife as weird or even primitive.

Australia was seen by them as a place with joke animals, and alarmingly no pre existing humans. Well, Jack Ashby doesn't think this is a very grown up way to look at things. He sees platypuses and echidnas and Tasmanian devils and all our other creatures as noble, beautiful and fascinating. And he wants the world to know all about them. Jack's book is called Platypus Matters: The Extraordinary Story of Australian Mammals. Hi, Jack.

Hi, Richard. Thanks for having me today. Your museum in Cambridge. This is Darwin's museum. What kind of stuff have you got in that museum? We've got about two million specimens covering the whole of the animal kingdom, the whole of geological time or biological time I should say, um, the whole of the world. So Rydyn ni'n gwybod, mae'n gwybod, mae'n gwybod, mae'n gwybod, mae'n gwybod, mae'n gwybod, mae'n gwybod, mae'n gwybod, mae'n gwybod.

ended up leaving his collections to the Cambridge Philosophical Society, which is one of the founding parts of our museum. So you got stuff there from the Voyage of the Beagle? Have you got like a turtle or something or a tortoise from the We have and we've got what Darwin did when he came back from um from the Beagle is to is to partition off different groups of animals to different experts in those fields.

uh and we ended up or Cambridge ended up with the fishes, which might not be the kind of the sexiest part of the Beagle collection. So we've got Darwin's fishes um from the Beagle. We've also got the Finches that came back from the Beagle, which are Probably the most famous thing to come off the beagle because

Darwin's finches, I'm I'm doing air quotes around Darwin's finches here, um, are perhaps the best example of how evolution worked in Darwin's eyes. So these are the Galapagos finches, uh a finch, it turns out um or one species of finch flew from South America to the Galapagos Islands and there evolved into fourteen different species with different beaks. So some beaks for big nutcracking beaks for sma for smashing seeds.

some really fine beaks for pecking flowers. Um and Darwin used this as an example of of a of adaptive radiation of to say this is how it evolved. But the reason I did air quotes is because our finches aren't actually collected by Darwin. They were collected by uh the captain Fitzroy and one of the uh one of the crew, Fuller, who actually did a far better job than d at Darwin than Darwin, of labelling the specimens and where they came from.

So you're surrounded by all these wonderful specimens, and yet, and yet, and yet for you, it was the platypus that entirely enchanted you, Jack. Tell me about this platypus. What was the first one you saw? And how did you become so enchanted? The first thing. Part of a specimen I saw was actually in the museum in which I I now work in Cambridge as an undergraduate many years ago.

And uh we our course in zoology was essentially you were given one group of animals per week and we'd have a load of lectures about those that group and then we'd go to the museum for for practical sessions with the specimens and and So this was the week they wheeled out the monitorings, wasn't it? Absolutely. And uh yeah, my lecturer Adrian Friday, who's still around the museum, kind of absolutely sparked this.

These are the most amazing animals that have ever evolved, uh I thought for me, and uh they they are absolutely astonishing. And then platypuses and echidnas acted as a kind of gateway drug for me into the rest of Australian mammals. Why did you love them so much? They they are astonishing. The things they can do are kind of unlike pretty much any other mammal on Earth. And they're kind of an evolutionary biologist's dream because they've got features you know, evolution works by

starting at us at its starting point in in whatever group you're looking at and then kind of adding or subtracting from there. And platypuses have retained some features that um other mammals haven't retained, like walking with bent elbows and knees and ond ond ond ond ond ond ond ond ond ond ond ond ond ond ond ond ond ond

You see, when I was talking about this with my producer Nicola earlier on, she and I both distinctly recall in school when we were kids being taught that monotremes were not mammals. Now I w we both have memories of this in in school and we're going back um some decades now, I'm afraid to say, Jack, uh in in this case. And so it's interesting to hear you s call them mammals. Has there been a shift or something?

Well, absolutely this this was a a a major conundrum when platypuses' an echidnas were first encountered by Europeans in the seventeen nineties because So I'm pr pretty sure you weren't at school in the seventeen nineties, but the uh the uh kind of the rules by which naturalists had arranged the world didn't allow for plastic and echidnas to be considered mammals. But it was really confusing because um they had fur, which was a defining feature of mammals, remains a defining feature of mammals.

They suckle their young, but with platypuses and echidnas, because they don't have nipples, it took a really long time to prove that indeed they do produce milk. Sorry, they suckle. They they suckle without they without nipples. That must hurt. Well, it I guess it adds less because the what they're doing is they're almost sweating their milk outside. Really? Right. So the reason the reason it was problematic is that female platpuses

only well like anything I guess, only have large mammary glands whilst they're actually lactating. So people kept catching plush buses that they couldn't find the mammary glands, they couldn't find the nipples, therefore not a mammal, but it turns out that they spread to cover pretty much

the whole of their bellies and even up round on their backs. Really? Their milk glands. And then they sweat them out into these little milk patches on on their undersides and the babies lap them up from there. And actually, if you think about it, platypus platypuses, I guess, the most famous for their bills, right?

You can't suckle with a bill. So you can't attach yourself to a a nipple with a bill. So we if the if they did have nipples, they would never have evolved beaks, is my contention, I guess, there. They all they're doing is basically kind of sucking it up from wicked fur. Right. So the the milk goes into the fur and they they kind of lap it up from there.

This is one of the reasons why they cause such confusion when the Europeans encounter They have fur like a mammal, they suckle their young like a mammal, even though they don't have nipples.

That was the biggest controversy that it took nearly ninety what took ninety years to prove that platypus is an echidna's lay eggs. Um What? What do you mean? Didn't I just go and look at it? Well, I mean first thing to say is obviously the first colonists were asking Indigenous Australians how do they reproduce and Indigenous Australians were saying they lay eggs and uh And they go, Oh, he's pulling my leg.

They just didn't do that. They just dismiss exactly they just dismissed the people who obviously known these species for sixty thousand years or more. So this is like a black swan event in other words, isn't it? S or something like that. Where you say, Well, no one ever thought there could be a black swan until a black swan appeared. Absolutely. And so people were collecting patch buses and trying to stop it was a m one of the biggest controversies of the nineteenth century, partly because

It was so tied up with the idea of d does evolution happen? You know, so Darwin was Darwin's uh theory was published in in 1859. So that 90-year fight for the platypus eglings, right? Kind of surrounds Darwin's publication.

But I think there were people who just weren't willing to accept that something that looked like a mammal could do something so kind of primitive, if you like, and reptilian, dragging our our noble class down into the into the mud with belly dragging uh frogs and lizards and things like that and just in a kind of political social idea. Because we're mammals, right?

Because we're mammals. But um and also that just the idea that if you've got a group that show some kind of reptile like characteristics and some mammal like characteristics, so fur and eggs, for example, um, that would lend weight to the idea that species do change, that it's a kind of

intermediate, which is not how we look at platypuses and echidnas now, but it's got features of both groups which really adds weight to the evolutionist true idea. So In other words, they were confounding because they they really tacked

the European mind and all that kind of taxonomy they had of of setting up this structure of how the animal kingdom was supposed to work. There's the platypus out there and there's the echidna out there that says that, well, you're gonna have to sort of dismantle that and put it back together. Exactly. They just they broke the rules. Yeah.

They're rebels. They're evolutionary rebels. So when was it you first caught sight of uh a real life platypus in the wild, Jack? It was on the twenty third of december two thousand five. Um and I was I was uh in Tasmania and we'd been if I I was there like I don't know if I'm alone in this but I think I hope a lot of kind of naturalists or or nature loving people have these kind of

I will use the word bucket list, but I think that may be dismissive a bit more. But there are species we want to see, and patopuses. since that that undergraduate class I'd been at the top of my list of I must do the species and um

So as soon as I got a job, that was the target, you know, raise save enough money to to fly to Tasmania and see some flashbusses. And we'd been there about a week or or so and we'd been doing the overland track, which is um kind of uh six day, five, six day walk across central Tasmania in the middle of summer.

And every night we'd go down to the lakes and rivers that we were camping by to look for platypuses. But unfortunately it was beautiful weather and the overland track is beautiful, so many people were on it and they were all swimming. Um, so we didn't have a chance. But on the very last night, which was Lake St Clair, uh which is Australia's deepest lake, we'd come come out of the snow and so it's t it's sum summer in Tasmania, I'm sure.

Many people know that it can swing from T shirt weather to snow. Uh we came out of the snow down um down through the rainforest and it was re it became really heavy, rainforest rain. We thought no one's gonna be swimming tonight. So we went down to the lake and we stopped. Actually, my friend Toby Nolan and I would had kind of got this scheme of you'd wait for one someone to see a platypus and then you'd wait for it to dive and then you'd catch the attention of the other person.

What you'd wave frantically. You'd wave frankly, you'd shout because platypuses close their eyes and ears underwater, so they can't hear anything. But they are super sensitive on on the surface. So you have to kind of stand dead still. And and Toby I'd realised had gone way out of earshot from where I was sitting. So I get up and I start following his his footsteps.

Um and I can see him on the other side of this marsh and in his face it is obvious to me that he has just Cedar Platypus and I am terrified because what you know, what the worst case scenario is that he sees it and I don't know. I play selfish, but that was Well you had flown all the way to Tassie every two, yeah. Yeah. So uh he he signals that it's safe to come that it's diving.

Um and we and we kinda stand there. So this I think the the tried and tested rules of seeing a platypus are like I don't know if you have this game in Australia, but you know, Grandmother's Footsteps or What's the Time, Mr. Wolf? of where Monsters in the dark.

Monsters in the dark. Is that it? So you if you know, you've got to creep closer to to your target, but if they see you move, you're out. And that's how it goes with the platypus. So you you wait for them to dive and you give yourself thirty seconds. Exactly. Exactly. Right. Do yourself thirty seconds and you freeze and you wait for it to um come back up again. And on that time we'd we'd seen it, it was it was just kind of over overjoyed.

And we crept closer, I think, three times of this kind of dive. run, freeze, surface, dive, run, freeze. And the third time it dived and I ran and up to to my closest point. And I was um I gave myself my thirty seconds and then the part of us did not reappear and it may be two, three minutes later. And they can do amazing things. They can drop their their um kind of metabolism to like ten beats per minute their hearts can go to at uh by So they can stay down down there for a while. Right.

Ten minutes or more. minutes without breathing, right? Yeah. And um and eventually when it surfaced, it's like I got I got the rules wrong and I just ran. It was like it I I'd been waiting too long. Um and it dived and it was gone. I oh I we got a more than a glimpse. We saw it for a you know, a good three three surfaces.

Great. I get a sense of I don't know, my over am I overstating this, but a sense of s um your sense of sacredness. Did you feel like you were kind of a guest in A natural cathedral. I think I think so. That's I think it's always the case when you're kind of encountering live wild mammals. You know, I work with sp dead specimens in museums where it's very much on our terms. We can do whatever we like, you know, we can turn them whatever angle. Um Which is boring.

But it's not boring. You s learn so much from these specimens, but in the wild you're there on the animals' terms. It's you know, it's there's nothing you can do to make them stay longer or Yes, you're a grown man playing monsters in the car. Exactly. With the play.

it has this famous bill that's often likened to the bill of a duck. Is it like the bill of a duck? It is not so. I think when you know the piece the species was described by Europeans in Europe, so they'd spent they were sent dried specimens, so once you sent it's it's they go leathery. In fact if you look at historic images of platypuses where the bill joins the face

The bits that's supposed to cover them the face, so the the back of the bill folds over their face, is kind of stick up stuck upright and it's kind of at right angles to their bill. You see this on historic drawings and then taxidermy from which Oh it's not like a beak then. No, so it's got two little rods of bone running through it. I think they look like a an earwigs pincers, um, as a skeleton, but then they're covered with this this skin and it's soft and and leathery.

Um, but inside is the most astonishing sensory system of any mammal. What do you mean? They are um platypuses and echidnas and one species of dolphin are the only mammals that can detect electricity. So their bills have electroreceptors in them. And the reason for that is, as I said, they close their eyes and ears underwater, but they can eat.

seven hundred grams a day of of crayfish and worms. It's a lot of worms. So how do they find this food? Um and the answer is electroreception. So As as we're taught in in biology classes at school, every muscular contraction, including our heartbeats, is controlled by an electrical impulse from our nervous system.

And platypuses can sense the world in these electrical impulses. So they're basically hunting their worm and crayfish prey down by feeling their heartbeats, the electrical impulses given off by their heartbeats. That's why they rummage around in the gravel of the riverbed with their bills.

Yes, exactly. So they they kind of work like a metal detectorist sweeping their their bills around. If you watch them it's it's very back and forth. They're also very, very sensitive to touch, so they can feel things too. They don't need to use electricity as all the time. So once they've caught the prey in their door, how do they how do they actually grind it up?

They this this is a great story, I think. Firstly they have pouches like a hamster. So they whilst they're underwater they stuff all their food into their cheeks, cheek pouches. And then once they they only eat on the surface. And as I'm sure anyone who's been to the dentist knows, teeth are a really bad idea. You know, like Sure, they can grind things up, but if they get damaged it's kind of it's game over. Yeah. It's it's extremely unpleasant. And patchbuses eat really hard food, so they smash

You know, many, many crayfishes a day. But what they've done is they've they they've evolved from animals with teeth, and in fact, platpus is a hat. grow tiny little teeth and then reabsorb them. Um so they definitely evolve from animals with teeth. But what they've done is they're adults as don't ha don't have teeth. They've um evolved these horny ridges. They look like a kind of

comb on its side. Um and they're made of horns, they're made of keratins, the same as our fingernails and our hair. And these are constantly regrowing ridges. So they're really tough. They can grind up crayfish and mollusks and and whatever else they might eat. And Just constantly regrow. So it's a fantastic evolutionary adaptation. What they that what they sit in the side of their mouth.

Where their teeth would be. And then they're they're like these regrowing plates then, are they? Yeah. That dis that can crush crayfish. Yeah. Yeah. And they're really bumpy. Uh they look like I say like a comb. Please if if this is such a good thing, why don't we have this? Great question. I think it's so weird that so few

Only one mammal, as far as we know, has evolved ever replacing teeth, and actually that's a species of wallaby. Um How versatile are those webbed little hands and feet that they've got? Super versatile. They you know, they live in three worlds. They live underground as borrowing mammals, they live on land as as walking mammals, and they live in the water as swimming mammals, and they do that because of their front feet. And I like to describe them as kind of transformers or Swiss army.

that they they pop out these tools or fold them away depending on what they're doing. So in the water they've they can fold out this big fan of skin that goes beyond their fingers, um and kind of held by the struts of their fingernails, their claws. And that makes you know great paddles, so they're very good swimmers. Yeah, but what about when they're on land though?

Um on land they fold up this um this webbing and walk on their knuckles. They walk they kind of bunch up fists and they and they walk like that. And then when they're digging they fold out like a garden fork. So they fold back. the webbing, but their claws are really long for an animal of their size. And they can you know female platputs can grow can dig over ten metres. Um so they've got they're also, you know, encased in this this this beautiful silky looking fur.

How good is that at keeping water from their skin? It's amazing because if you watch a platypus for any length of time, after a little while it'll start preening it. to start grooming and they're super flexible. Their hind feet can kind of reach under their you know, over their heads. Um

And that's because some of the most flexible animals we've ever seen. Um and that's because, you know, all aquatic mammals tend to have really with fur, should I say semi aquatic mammals, tend to have really dense under fur because It's it's strange to think of, but a platypus can spend twenty odd hours underwater without getting wet. Um so their fur is so dense uh in a healthy platypus that that under fur will keep them um keep them dry. And unfortunately for them, that is

Uh that became a a major target of the kind of fur industry. They are the the animals with uh you know, in the nineteenth century at least, um, with the most valuable fur of any Australian mammal. This is an odd question, but do they make noises? I don't think I've ever heard or seen in a video or certainly not live, uh Cladypus make any noises. But do they make any noises? The the young ones have been described as growling in their nests, which I find quite adorable.

You've not heard this yourself? I've not heard this myself, but people who have excavated them get these have just described like this kind of little puppy like growl, which is it's quite adorable. That's right. Yeah. You mentioned there that they burrow. How do they make these burrows and and where do they do that? So again this they they do I think they burrow better than any other burrowing animal I can think of.

most burrowing animals animals what they're doing is kicking out fur behind uh soil behind them. So they they kind of excavate a bit and they'll push the fur the soil backwards um and then you'll see these big spoil heaps of of soil outside their burrows which make Makes them easy to find. Exactly. Exactly. And plus if you you know I watched marmots, which are kind of like the European version of a wombat and they just Just things. Showers of

soil um flying out the ground behind them. But what platypuses do is they if at least where the soil's uh soft enough is that they kind of just push the soil into the walls. So they make no spoil heaps, which means they're really hard to find. They're really strong. Uh if you look at a plate of a skeleton it's covered with these lumps and bumps that attach muscle. um uh for making really, really big uh spade like hands when they're when they're in that configuration.

So where did they put the spoil though? They just push it into the walls of the t of the tunnel. What they wiggle in. They wiggle in and they so the platypus burrow is pretty much the same dimension as the platypus. They all kind of spin round to tamp the soil into the wall.

Um so it's they don't have it also means if you're if you're a thirty, forty centimetre long animal that's burrowing for ten meters, you don't have to move ten metres of soil, which is really energetically costly, back down the burrow. You just push it into the walls. So they're making the walls of their burrows out of what is tightly compressed soil then. So that makes it structurally stronger too. Yes, yeah. That's extraordinary.

Why is Australia so special to you, aside from the platypus, and how does the wildlife in Australia compare to other kinds of Check. Well I I it's it's not a very scientific thing to say, but I think that they are the best animals live in Australia. I like I I I appreciate the fact you're subjective in such matters. I think this is good. Yeah. So the I I guess the scientific reason is that Australia and New Guinea are the only place in the world where all three groups of mammals exist.

So the m the you know mammal uh class is split into three groups placental mammals like us, which produce um babies after long pregnancy that then finish off. um their infant growth by a short period of suckling milk, and then there are marsupials which do the opposite, so they have a really short pregnancy and then do most of their infant growth suckling milk, often in a pouch. And then there are platipuses and echidnas, which lay eggs.

And New Guinea and Australia are the only place where you can find all three. So it's kind of a a mammal watching dream here. You nonetheless have seen some pretty extraordinary creatures in other parts of the world. You seem like like a sloth bear, is that right or have I got that wrong? Sorry, a bear sloth or Yeah. North Bay. Right. I have, but it's one of the most frustrating encounters I've ever experienced because I all I could see was it's the pinpricks of its eyes.

um we could hear it it um feeding on fruit. We hear it snuffling around and in the very, very limits of our torch beam we just got this reflection back. of eyes and and we uh we were whisked away by our guide. Why is that?'Cause they are probably one of the most dangerous mammals on earth. Their claws are maybe ten centimeters long for for smashing into um ant hills and termite mounds, and they are very vicious. And so when we s we're walking around at night stumble across a feeding slough bear.

They they're really cute. Baloo from the jungle book is based on um Sloth Bear. So yeah that's Well that's not. Well just you know, take your face off. How about seeing snow leopards? You've seen snow leopards in the wild, which is a incredible privilege. Like I had the slo snow leopard expert on some years ago. I think it took years before he'd seen one. Whatever how did you get to see one?

Snow leopards had been after platypuses and echidnas and wombats had kind of uh had uh managed to see them and and see them regularly. Snow leopards were at the top of the list but never realistically thought it was possible. But then one day Um my friend again Toby Nolan who who's a he works as a um natural history filmmaker, he said, I've got it, I've got the place and I've got the the hook up where we can go, which is

Spity Valley in in India. Most people go to Ley in the Dak and we went a bit further south and It was f it was fraught with of you know, the typical adventure of kind of remote parts of the world where we got there and an and an avalanche knocked out the road and we were stuck in this tiny village. behind the you know, the wrong side of the avalanche for the snow leopards for three days. And eventually someone said, Okay, we're driving to the avalanche. Someone's driving on the other side.

climb over the avalanche and we'll swap cars. And then we drove back up the mountain and um yeah, we we saw snow leopards every day. Uh Every day I had Every day for a a week or so. It was absolutely stunning. You like you're looking into the eyes of the snow leopard. I saw you as well.

a narrow gorge, um, but there's a a mother and two cubs, um, just old enough. They were just about to leave her and there was a male prowling around waiting to to mate, I think what's as soon as the female had uh got rid of the of the young and it was absolut it's one of those things you just can't believe that you're there with one of the most Hard to see animals on Earth. They're so beautiful, aren't they? They are so incredibly beautiful. What's it like to watch them move with that authority?

confidence. Yes, exactly that authority. They they're slinking, they kind of walk through snow with such ease. Their feet are huge as kind of snowshoes and then walking watching them kind of climb among the rocks. Um in hunt of Ibex um and blue sheep it's just their their uh there's n it kinda makes your hair stand on end.

A large part of your book, Jack, is the strange things that happened when Europeans time when they first came to Australia and how how much chaos and confusion it caused in the scientific world and in the larger world in general, just by the very existence of an animal like.

Suckles its young and yet lays eggs and seems to be to your a European's eyes an amalgam of a whole bunch of other You've got a picture in your book that was that comes from the second governor of New South Wales, John Hunter. It's a picture of a platypus. Tell me the story of how he came to make that drawing and what became Yeah, so Hunter was was uh out on the Hawkesby River, um, near Sydney, and he was watching a Daruk man hunting on the water.

And he watched him spear this animal, which which Hunter then went on to describe as an amphibious mammal amphibious animal of the mole kind.

Which I love. I love the the earliest Europe Eng uh English name for patripuses was duck mole, which is I think Duck Mole. Duck mole. It's something that's kinda perfect. But then uh I'm first to say that so Hunter is kind of given credit for discovering the Patipus and for hunting for collecting this platipus but and kind of the ignoring the fact that it was of course a Darkman who

Exactly. Um and so then Hunter ships it off in a barrel to firstly to Joseph Banks, whose name is written all over the natural history of Australia in the last two hundred and fifty years.

And then asking him to take it to the the Royal Literary and Philosophical Society in Newcastle upon Tyne, which is a town in the northeast of England. And In its barrel, so it was in a barrel of spirits was a a wombat that Hunter had also tried to keep alive and it died after six weeks because Hunter failed to work out what it ate, which I find quite surprising'cause

You know, wombat to eat grass and sedges and uh other things like that. But then it it arrived um in Newcastle and it was carried to the Like a pickled wombat and a pickled platypus in the same barrel.

In the same barrel, yeah. Um complete except the for their guts, uh that he'd sent them over. And um And he's unfortunately, the story goes that there's a a woman whose name has not been recorded, carrying the barrel on her head to the society's uh meeting rooms and as she entered the building it smashed. And she was drenched in pungent spirits. And I mean and yeah, so no she was

first Europeans ever to touch a platypus as it whacked her on the head um on the way down and you know and a thirty kilo wombat which is presumably slightly more dangerous. So This poor woman was suddenly what drenched and draped in alcohol and Pickled out. Pletypus and wombat remains. Exactly, yeah. Mm. That'd be a really stupid way to die, wouldn't it? Absolutely. But she did survive. She survived. Survive. Yes, as far as it's recorded. She was unhappy though, I think we can see

I imagine so yeah. But although well it's hope amongst that unhappiness was just the joy of Oh my goodness, look at this amazing animal. Um but yes, along with along with the those specimens Hunter had sent drawings of his duck mole and uh and of the wombat um too. So that's kind of how Europe came to know of the species.

You've got a story too of that sort of continues this story of Europe's strange relationship with the platypus. Winston Churchill Winston Churchill wanted to get hold of some platypuses during World War two. What's the story behind that? Mm-hmm. Thank you. It is bizarre to think that whilst, you know running thick of the the western sphere of of of World War Two. It was like, Oh, do you know what would really help me right now? Is six live platypuses. Well, he was an animal lover. Yeah.

I think he had a pet goat for a while. He had cats and dogs around Chartwell. He also took care to make sure there were ravens in the Tower of of of London during the war and that the monkeys were in uh in Gibraltar Gibraltar as well. Yeah. Yeah, so i it was decided that yes, it it would probably be political sen politically sensible for Australia to go against its its legislation against exporting platypuses and send Winston Churchill one platypus. Why sorry, why did he want a platypal start?

It's unclear. He just really he was just really liked the idea of having a platypus. Plaspises are ridiculously hard to keep in captivity. Um but the one man who had successfully reared them, uh bred them in captivity, uh was David Flay, and so he was ch put in charge of preparing this platypus, who was also to be called Winston, um, for his joy voyage um to the UK. And um What became of the poor thing? Well unfortunately unfortunately just four days out of Liverpool dock.

He uh the ship was was torpedoed by German U boats and although the ship didn't sink the the kind of shockwaves, I guess, to such a sensitive animal, especially after a long voyage where its worm rations had been reduced. um it died. So I think it's kind of extraordinary that a platypus was a victim of World War two yeah, so World War II attack. That's do we know where this platypus is? We don't. It's if we know that it the story of the year.

of the import and export of the Patripus was kept from the British public because the failure isn't good propaganda. Yeah. Um but uh he then kept w Churchill then kept the taxidermy dano on his desk, but its whereabouts are currently unknown.

We talked a little bit about the fact that platypus Suckle the young, but they don't have nipples and they have this strange uh well not strange, but v enormously large mammary glands that sort of s seem to encircle their bodies, I th I think you were saying.

Uh tell me about the whole process of Platypus courtship, if you can. How does the course of Platypus love run between? A lady and a man platform loving each other very much. Um well yeah, they it's it's hard to observe this in the world'cause they are tricky species to to study. But um what's been seen in captivity is it's very much up to the the female platypus that whatever You know, the male comes comes knocking. If she's not keen she'll just swim off to another

uh area. But when when she is ready they engage in this this beautiful aquatic dance where and they follow each other round and they they bite on like h he'll bite onto her tail and vice versa and they'll swim round in these platypus love circles uh and kind of go upside down and and tumble through the water. Um and then when when the moment comes he'll bite onto her neck or onto her back and um pop his penis out of his cloaca, which is they they know Out of his cloaca?

monotreams have cloacers, which is a kind of one stop shop for all of their reproduction and waste disposal needs. It's all the one thing, isn't it? Yeah.

Absolutely. Um so they don't have separate holes. They just have the one hole. And but the the penises only popped out when when it's needed. Uh they don't even um they don't they don't pee through their penises, which is unusual. Wow. Um He'll fold the back end of his body under hers and they'll mate and then he'll swim off into the sunset never to be seen again. Yeah, exactly. And so once she's she's once she's impregnated then she she digs a burrow then, does she?

Digs a burrow, um digs a nesting burrow, which is long, maybe ten meters long, uh with a with a chamber at the end, and that she'll keep that moist with some vegetation, lay her eggs after um It's either three weeks of of gestation and then ten days of of incubation or the other way around. I think it's that way around. These eggs, are they like like I don't know, chicken eggs or ostrich eggs?

They're most like uh snake and crocodile eggs. So they're a bit flexible, turtle eggs. So they're kind of marble. They're they're a bit like an elongated marble. They're just, you know, one and a half centimetres or so long and a little bit shorter, or a little bit uh less fat than that. Rydyn ni'n ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud.

In c some kind of secretion that means that they stick together and I think perhaps that makes them easier to keep hold of. And she'll keep them clamped in her fold up like against her belly in her f by folding her tail up over them, which is kinda sweet. I'm going to ask you a very unscientific question. Are prepared to sort of be a bit subjective about things. Are their babies adorable? They are so adorable. Um there isn't really a word for them. Um so I've I've proposed platypath.

So I'd like I'd like people to go out in the world and and f and you know call baby patterpuses patterpaps. But they they're born until they hatch with a kind of like comedy human nose and that's because they've got this little lump called a corunkel, which Um they use firstly to break out of the shell. They also have an egg tooth. Um and then the coruncula is also used for you know kneading the mother's mammary glands to we think to um promote

uh milk production. Um and then the then the bills kind of grow into a more platypus shape over over months, but they uh they are very sweet.

Something else I didn't know until The male platypus has venomous. A m a a mammal with venom? Is that as unusual as I think it is, Jack? Well there the yeah, the list of mum of venomous mammals is extremely short. So there's platypuses, there's um shrews, there's slow lorises, and there's selenodons which are related to the Slow lorises are venomous. This is where you can get away from them pretty pretty shopping. But yeah, platformuses, male platformuses.

Look out. Here comes the slow loris. But uh but where does the where does the male uh platypus keep this venom? In its mouth or teeth? Oh no. Of course, right. So where does it keep it? They have long spurs, about two centimeters long, on the inside of their ankles. Um and in fact they're the only known seasonally venomous animal across the animal kingdom. So the only mammal the only animal that is only venomous some of the time. Well what does that tell you? That it's seasonally venomous.

use their venom for for um competition in mating. So it's male on male competition, so they're fighting each other and and uh envenomating each other because if it were used for defence we'd expect the females to be venomous too, but they are not. Is there research being done with this venom? Yeah. Yeah. That's such an odd thing to say.

Extraordinary the venom is is I was about to say the venom is unlike any other venom on earth, but that's the opposite is true. Um that they The cocktail is unlike anything else on Earth, but actually they've evolved venom that is almost uh so they've got maybe twenty or so different venom compounds. And that each of those compounds have evolved convergently with

the venom that's seen in centipedes, frogs, fishes, snakes, spiders, jellyfish. So they they've kind of got the best bits of venom from the animal kingdom. And of course this isn't how evolution works. They've taken them together and made a super cocktail. How people not many people have been have recorded being stung by apatrophs, but

say. Like, you know, I I've I've lived in Australia for some time and I don't know anyone who's ever been oh got it s got stung by bloody pat platypus the other day Those that have done have described an excruciating pain that can last for months. literally months and then um muscle wastage that that goes on for decades. So people have been able un have unable to regain movement

for you know, I think I think one report I can think of that I can specifi specify a natural number was fifteen years. Um still wouldn't couldn't move their hands properly. Um and that is because one of these compounds is Is is extraordinarily stable. So it's it just doesn't break down. And that that may be why um platypus venom lasts so long. So yeah. In answer to your question, th those compounds could be potentially very useful for pain reduction and just how do pain receptors work in humans.

The other great monotreme in Australia is the Very different looking beast. To the platypus, is it? I mean yet it also you know lays eggs and suckles its young. Like I say, they seem to be really different creatures, the spiny anteater and the platypus. Are they more closely related than they appear to be? Um

The the oldest fossil we have I think is only fifteen million years, but genetics suggests fifty million. Um so they and once you you know, once you take their clothes off, their skeletons are quite similar. Um but yeah, they're pla uh goodness I I are a brilliant animals too. These spines. They are such a good defensive system. If they can move them individually, they can lock them into roots and soil and pebbles, they become immovable.

You walk up to it and it very quickly rolls up into a ball and tucks its head and its legs, uh the most vulnerable parts, tucks its legs and its head under the spine. I call that DEF CON too. But if they're really skinny. um what they do is use all four hands and they do jazz hands with with all four feet, as I say, and it drills like kind of like a handheld blender. It drills vertically into the soil. And they you just watch them with a nothing more than a shimmy. They just disappear

downwards into the soil. And those feet then lock into the roots and and pebbles too. And th they become completely immovable. You cannot pick up a platypus that's gone to DEF CON one. Oh in echidna. Yeah. You went out to Brunei Island, Tassie, with the A friend of yours to go looking for Tell me about that experience for you, that adventure you had at Adventure Bay.

We were in Adventure Bay. Um yeah. And so we'd seen Echa echidnas were actually first encountered by Europeans in Adventure Bay in seventeen ninety two, which is a a nice uh

circles to that story. But yes, I think that the story you're talking about is we've been in there, we've been looking at Echidnas and Quals and the other wonders of Bruni Island. Uh and we'd been staying in our car in um in the car park with them sleeping in the car in the beach car park in in Adventure Bay as as, you know, poor young people do.

um rather than pay to go in the campground. And every day we'd wake up with a flat battery. Uh I won't go into what was happening there, but every day we'd go into the Adventure Bay General store and they would lend us they would refuse to sell them to us, but they'd lend us jump leads and we'd have to jump start the car.

Um so we became very well known to the general store and they they convinced us to go to the Adventure Bay New Year's Eve uh party. Yeah, so they said, Oh, you know, bring your own food, bring your own music, bring your own grog. And we we expected that everyone in in in that in South Brunei, or at least a hundred and fifty people or so in reach of the village, would be there. But we we opened the door. It was a stormy night.

Um it felt like I don't know if you American werewolf in London and you go they these you know the tourists open the door to the pub and uh everyone What it was. starts immediately and stares at them. Um and there were twelve people in this in this party. And they were extraordinarily welcoming, but they were all waltzing. So they'd they'd been um learning

a waltz for the New Year's Eve party since February. But one of the guests, there's twelve people and there was a wallaby, uh which was an extraordinary ex experience that someone had had rescued um a you know pouch young of a roadkill. So I spent much of the evening with this this this baby Wallaby that couldn't leave the warmth of a warm body. Um so it was definitely the best New Year's he've ever had.

Large part of your book is about this odd disdain there is for Australia's wildlife. It's historic really You hear it from Americans, you hear from the British, hear it from Europeans as well. Where Australia's wildlife is seen as kind of primitive. It's a really odd thing.

Wha it's a really kind of an or irritating thing I find um every time I've gone to America. Americans will say, Oh, I can't possibly go to Australia. I'll get killed in five seconds. Everything in Australia's trying to kill you. What do you make of all that, this culture of Australia is like the junkyard of God's mistakes, you know.

So I think absolutely. I think those two things you just described, the kind of everything is trying to kill you and the primitive idea are both very much intertwined. So that these are both ways of kind of writing off Australian mammals in a

And I'm sure entirely subconscious, but it's it's a cl it's a hangover from a colonial mindset. If you read any nineteenth century description or eighteenth century description of Australian mammals, they are all without exception, describing them as as lesser mammals, of lower, inferior, primitive indeed, that they are they are not meeting the st so in in being seen as being different to the kind of zoological standard of the animals they were familiar with in Europe. And the Americas.

What they're letting down the side or something, the mammals. If you say yeah, they you're using this zoological standard and and simply by by being different to a placental mammal, like a cow or a human. They were just written off as being inferior to it. And I think it very much was tied into the kind of colonial project of

of kind of putting down everything in Australia, the people, the ha the landscape and habitats and and climate and the wildlife. And by tying the wildlife into this kind of terrest argument. there is nothing there of of value. Um, it helped justify the invasion. And

As I say, every single scientific description is is is saying these are strange, weird, primitive, inferior animals. And where that the kind of everything is trying to kill you comes in, I think it's it's absolutely bonkage, you know. America, like I I always say to Americans, you've got bears in your country, man. They're like sharks that can walk on land. Exactly.

And they come into your backyard and eat your trash. I mean none no sharks. What are you guys like, are you crazy? It's like it's really weird. Other than Europe, um or at least parts of Europe. that Australia is the only continent that doesn't have any large land predators. Um so it's it is the safest place. I've spent, you know, I've spent the last couple of weeks in Tasmania on field work and I'd be out every night on my own in the forest.

Spotlighting for animals, with absolutely no fear that I'm gonna get eaten by a tiger or a bear or a wolf at any point. Your toe won't get nibbled off by a Tasmanian devil. Well it's pretty unlikely, unfortunately. Um Yeah. responses the British had when they came to Australia to the natural Yeah, they whether they were often arriving in places as beautiful as Sydney Harbour, the Derwent River, the Swan River.

And you can see in some of the records sometimes they went, Oh, this is an incredibly beautiful place. This is stunning But then there are others like Baron Field who wrote this poem called Kangaroo. I'm just gonna quote the first stanza of it for you. It's uh definitely it might be the only Actually, he came here in eighteen sixteen to serve as a judge. He wrote Kangaroo, kangaroo, thou spirit of Australia that redeems from utter failure.

From perfect desolation and warrants the creation of this fifth part of the earth, which would seem an afterbirth, not conceived in the beginning, for God blessed his work at first. And saw that it was good, but emerged at the first sinning, when the ground was therefore cut. And hence this barren wood. Imagine imagine coming arriving in Australia and just going, Well, this is God's junkie. That's an extraordinary thing. This is really a widespread phenomenon, you found it.

Absolutely, throughout the nineteenth century and twentieth century. But actually I think it it harks on today in that if you go to any museum, uh hopefully outside of Australia you go to any museum. or any read any newspaper article about Australian mammals, particularly platypuses, or go to uh you know, watch a T V documentary.

The tropis, these are strange animals. They are weird, weird and wonderful, but nonetheless weird. And no other continent, another large part of the world, get has its wildlife treated in it. And every animal is weird. Like deer. How strange is it that an animal grows thirty kilos of bone every year and then just drops it? Out of its head. Out of its head. And just but like no one thinks oh the deers are weird. You know, if you go to

Yeah, where you know, India or or Africa places with kind of massive hunting and d uh hunting as well, but safari industries. Those animals are considered kind of noble and majestic elephants and rhinos and Tigers and and lions, like majestic and and awesome is the words you get for those. You don't

No one describes except m you know, fans like like ourselves I hope, uh, wombats as as kind of majestic. And I d and I think this is all tied into the way we've been socially conditioned by these years of kind of colonial Uh you know, nitpicking. Well not nitpicking, but you know, denigration of saying that they are kind of inferior, strange beasts.

Yes, Australia, very nice, but it's not cute gardens, is it? That that that that attitude as well. The word primitive is interesting. What does that mean anything to you as a naturalist, as a as a zoologist? What does primitive mean? It is so can so regularly used that, you know, plat people would say platypuses and echidnas are are the world's most primitive mammals.

But that makes absolutely no scientific sense. Um l let aside the kind of unscientific fact that I think they are the best animals. No to you know, every animal on earth is equally evolved, living animal. Every animal is l equally evolved. What it comes from is that

as I said earlier, they've they've retained certain features that we might consider primitive. So in the evolution of biology we might call a a feature primitive. So egg laying is a primitive feature because it's inherited from uh Monotrim's uh reptile like ancestors. But that doesn't make the whole species primitive. We all have primitive features. Legs

Human legs are primitive features'cause we've evolved them from the first fishes to walk on land. But that doesn't make us primitive. It's entirely subjective what we choose to say, this what set you apart. You know, and and interestingly with you know, with eggs in In in platypuses, if that's considered primitive, but if you look at eggs in birds, birds also evolved eggs you know, retained eggs from their reptile like ancestors, the dinosaurs.

And you could turn it around like you say and say that the platypus has these advanced grinding mechanisms and to grind down their food. They have these advanced forms of very stable compounds in their venom. But it's not like they're a platypus. scientists in laboratories working on this all the time, is there? So it's a kind of an odd thing to say that's primitive or advanced and none of none of this this makes sense. What about intelligence? Sometimes they're regarded as

Strange animals are often dismissed as unintelligent. Isn't that weird too? It's also strange and that that goes back to again nineteenth century descriptions who who just write them off as as animals with small brains and low intelligence and and this small brained idea, particularly for marsupials, was was considered so was so pervasive that no one bothered to check.

until it was twenty ten, my colleagues Andeli Goswamy and um Vera V Weisbecker thought, hang on, let's actually see how big Australian mammals' brains are and they measured the brain capacities of a load of different mammals from across the world. And they found that if you took out one group of animals which have freakishly large brains, which are the primates, if you take primates out of the equation, marsupials and placental mammals have the same size brains compared to their body mass.

Um and in fact at small body sizes, Marsupials have bigger brains. So it's it's a complete nonsense to suggest that they're unintelligent. But again You watch TV shows and you watch a wombat on a TV show, on a documentary, you can guarantee that they'll have some kind of bumbling background to music that kind of just suggests that they're a bit stupid. Oh yeah, and koala's a dopey too. That's the other thing as well. So this is all part of a colonial mindset to your mind?

I think so. It's a hang it's a subconscious hangover from the way we've been conditioned by two centuries or more of of Australian zoology. And is the platypal suffering from this, do you think? Well, unfortunately Australia it's not just Apatopus, but Australia has the worst mammal extinction rate of anywhere in the world of of every

from across the world of all extinctions that have happened since seventeen eighty eight, more than a third have happened in Australia. And and I think it just can't help if we write these animals off as inferior. It doesn't help, you know, argue against

you know, other demands on Australian resources if you're going up against, you know, mining or land clearing and or or urbanization, to think, oh these these little animals, they're cute, but ultimately they're, you know, evolutionary destined to go extinct. That's not how evolution works and I don't think it helps their case. We should embrace the wonderful and get rid of the weird and wonderful.

Embrace the platypus. That's the message here today. Well, but not literally because they have venomous spurs. Uh Jack, it's been such a pleasure talking with you and thank you. Thank you so much. Jack Ashby is the Assistant Director of the Museum of Zoology at the University of Cambridge, and his book is called Platypus Matters The Extraordinary Story from

This program was made on the lands of the Gadigal peoples. The producer was Mickey Morris, the executive producer was Carmel Rooney. I'm Richard Feidler. Thanks for listening. Mm. ABC Listen. Podcasts. Radio. music, and more.