During WWII, Churchill requested a live Platypus for the London zoo, so the Aussies carefully created a special living environment on board a ship. Its bill is used to detect electric fields in order to catch prey. In the wild, the Platypus is a solitary animal and hard to find as it prefers to stay away from human activity. Although there is basic history and physical description, this is much more of a human story as author Ann Moyal reviews the efforts of each successive naturalist to explain this strange creature and their efforts to find out if the Platypus laid actual eggs. This book specifically traces the effect the discovery of the Platypus had upon scientists in old world Europe. In the effort to finalize whether it was a true mammal or laid eggs like birds, the puzzling animal was almost wiped out by hunters and scientists. Europeans believed it was a hoax created by the southern continent's criminal emigrants.
Although there is basic history and physical description, this is much more of a Newly arrived colonists to Australia called it a 'duck-bill mole'. Newly arrived colonists to Australia called it a 'duck-bill mole'.
Eloquent and concise, Platypus uncovers the earliest theories and latest discoveries about this delightfully odd member of the animal kingdom.more In Platypus, Ann Moyal provides a unique biography of one of the world's most famously strange creatures and tells the incredible story of how it became the focus of the great scientific debates of the nineteenth century. On closer investigation, dubious European naturalists eventually declared it to be real, though in an age obsessed with classification, the category-defying platypus sparked heated debates across Europe for a century. In Platypus, Ann Moyal provides When the first platypus specimen reached England from Australia in 1799, the scientific community claimed that it was a hoax. When the first platypus specimen reached England from Australia in 1799, the scientific community claimed that it was a hoax.
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