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Platypus matters, the extraordinary story of Australian mammals, Jack Ashby

eng

Includes bibliographical references (pages 325-352) and index

platesillustrations

index present

non fiction

Platypus matters

bibliography

Jack Ashby

the extraordinary story of Australian mammals

Think of a platypus: they lay eggs, they produce milk without nipples and venom without fangs and they can detect electricity. Or a wombat: their teeth never stop growing, they poo cubes and they defend themselves with reinforced rears. Platypuses, possums, wombats, echidnas, devils, kangaroos, quolls, dibblers, dunnarts, kowaris: Australia has some truly astonishing mammals with incredible, unfamiliar features. But how does the world regard these creatures? And what does that mean for their conservation? Naturalist Jack Ashby shares his love for these often-misunderstood animals. Informed by his own experiences meeting living marsupials and egg-laying mammals on fieldwork in Tasmania and mainland Australia, as well as his work with thousands of zoological specimens collected for museums over the last 200-plus years, Ashby's tale not only explains the extraordinary lives of these animals, but the historical mysteries surrounding them and the myths that persist (especially about the platypus). He also reveals the toll these myths can take. Ashby makes it clear that calling these animals 'weird' or 'primitive' -- or incorrectly implying that Australia is an 'evolutionary backwater' -- a perception that can be traced back to the country's colonial history -- has undermined conservation: Australia now has the worst mammal extinction rate of anywhere on Earth

adult