Europeans first thought the platypus was a taxidermy hoax
Ornithorhynchus anatinus, the duck-billed platypus, lays eggs yet nurses young along eastern Australian streams including Tasmania. In 1799, naturalists facing a preserved body decided it must be stitched from several animals; Governor Hunter had mailed a pelt and sketch from New South Wales the year before.
The platypus, Ornithorhynchus anatinus, is a semiaquatic mammal found only in eastern Australia and Tasmania. It is the last surviving member of its family and genus, though fossils record several relatives, and with the four echidna species it makes up the five living monotremes, the mammals that lay eggs. Like other monotremes it hunts by electrolocation, sensing prey underwater with its eyes, ears and nostrils shut. It is also one of the few venomous mammals: each hind foot of the male carries a spur that delivers an excruciating venom.
Europeans first met it in 1798, when Captain John Hunter, second Governor of New South Wales, sent a pelt and a sketch to Britain. Scientists suspected a hoax, perhaps a duck's bill sewn onto a beaver-like body. George Shaw, who published the first description in 1799, admitted serious doubts and took scissors to the specimen to look for stitches, while Robert Knox wondered whether Chinese sailors had assembled it, since it came via the Indian Ocean. Shaw named it Platypus anatinus, from the Greek for flat foot, but a beetle genus already held that name. Johann Blumenbach independently described it in 1800 as Ornithorhynchus paradoxus, and the rules of priority produced today's Ornithorhynchus anatinus.
The animal carries many Aboriginal names, among them boondaburra, mallingong and tambreet around Yass and the Murrumbidgee, djanbang in Bundjalung and djumulung in Yuin; the approved name in the reconstructed Tasmanian language, Palawa kani, is larila. Several Aboriginal peoples once hunted it for food, and it now appears on Australian stamps and currency as a national symbol and a key subject in evolutionary biology.
Fur hunting drove its numbers down until every state in its range protected it by 1912. Captive breeding has had only slight success, and the species faces pollution, bycatch and climate change. The IUCN lists it as near threatened, and a November 2020 report urged upgrading it to threatened under the federal EPBC Act because of habitat loss and falling numbers in every state.
Source: Platypus
