Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Tracy the Wilson and I'm Holly Frying. A while back,
Speaker 1: I was wishing I had an episode to work on
Speaker 1: that was something along the lines of the pilt Down Man.
Speaker 1: The pilt Down Man was a case of scientific fraud.
Speaker 1: It was a skull that was purportedly fossil evidence of
Speaker 1: an evolutionary missing link, but really it was a total fabrication.
Speaker 1: Threw a ranch into the study of human evolution. But
Speaker 1: researching that one involved reading a lot of old science
Speaker 1: writing in which people were very authoritatively saying stuff that
Speaker 1: was totally wrong, and I just I enjoyed that research process.
Speaker 1: I even talk in the episode of how I enjoyed
Speaker 1: that process thanks to a totally random Jeopardy rerun that
Speaker 1: I saw while I was visiting my parents. I had
Speaker 1: an an idea for an episode that's almost the opposite
Speaker 1: of The pilt Down Man, because it's about how when
Speaker 1: European naturalists saw a platypus for the first time, it
Speaker 1: was so bizarre to them that they thought it was fake.
Speaker 1: Then they argued about how to classify the platypus in
Speaker 1: the taxonomy of animals for almost a century. This was
Speaker 1: happening in tandem with similar discussions about another Australian mammal,
Speaker 1: which is the kidna or spiny ant eater, and it
Speaker 1: was part of just discussions of the scientific taxonomy in general.
Speaker 1: That's what we're going to talk about today. And just
Speaker 1: as a heads up, European research into the anatomy and
Speaker 1: morphology of these animals included shooting a lot of them.
Speaker 1: Just be aware. So, the platypus is a mammal native
Speaker 1: to Eastern Australia, Tasmania and the surrounding islands. They're fairly
Speaker 1: unique in the animal world. And if you've never seen one,
Speaker 1: but you have seen lots of more typical mammals, I
Speaker 1: think it's seem incredibly weird. Yeah, if you're if you're
Speaker 1: animal experience with mammals is like bears and cats and dogs,
Speaker 1: you look at a platypus and you're like, what is this? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'll tell a story in our behind the scenes about
Speaker 1: the first time I saw a platypus or an image
Speaker 1: of a platypus. I should say, Okay, they have for
Speaker 1: like a mammal, but a bill that looks like it
Speaker 1: belongs on a bird, thus the name duck build platypus,
Speaker 1: although that bill is really a sensory organ that's a
Speaker 1: lot more flexible than a duck's bill. Males have spurs
Speaker 1: on their hind legs that are equipped with venom glands,
Speaker 1: something that's way more common among reptiles. Platypuses produce milk
Speaker 1: to feed their young like other mammals do, but they
Speaker 1: also lay eggs, which is something the overwhelming majority of
Speaker 1: other mammals do not do. It's a quite a while
Speaker 1: for European naturalists to figure out the whole milk production
Speaker 1: and egg laying situation, which is going to be a
Speaker 1: big part of this episode. But even without those details,
Speaker 1: the platypus just seemed bizarre. In British Royal Navy officer
Speaker 1: John Hunter, who would later become Governor of New South
Speaker 1: Wales Colony, wrote that the platypus had come to be
Speaker 1: thanks to quote a promiscuous intercourse between the different sexes
Speaker 1: of all these different animals. In other words, lots of
Speaker 1: different animals had mated with one another, and the platypus
Speaker 1: was the result That sounds kind of cookie today. But
Speaker 1: this was not just a random colonial officials rambling on
Speaker 1: the subject. Hunter was a naturalist himself. He was a
Speaker 1: member of the Royal Society. I mean I could see
Speaker 1: where there's no other explanations. I probable my child logic
Speaker 1: for where such animals came from, right, that would lead
Speaker 1: you to that sort of conclusion. But of course Australia's
Speaker 1: first people's have known about these animals for thousands of years.
Speaker 1: The platypus has a role in the Aboriginal religious and
Speaker 1: cultural knowledge that early anthropologists described as the dreaming or
Speaker 1: the dream time. These stories and traditions from all across
Speaker 1: the continent are deeply sacred to Aboriginal and tourist straight
Speaker 1: islander people's, so they aren't really ours to share in
Speaker 1: the podcast. But what we do want to stress here
Speaker 1: is that a lot of what Europeans were arguing about
Speaker 1: and trying to prove in the nineteenth century was already
Speaker 1: commonly known among many Aboriginal communities. Scientists simultaneously relied on
Speaker 1: Aboriginal people to help them find platypuses to study, and
Speaker 1: also disregarded their knowledge about their physiology. One of the
Speaker 1: reasons why the platypus was so baffling to Europeans and
Speaker 1: the nineteenth century was that naturalists and anatomists and other
Speaker 1: such specialists had been methodically cataloging and categorizing life on Earth,
Speaker 1: starting primarily with Swedish naturalist Carlinaeus in his System and
Speaker 1: a Tire or System of Nature. In seventeen thirty five,
Speaker 1: Linnaeus created a taxonomy that arranged life into a hierarchy.
Speaker 1: And this was a hierarchy that was based on observable
Speaker 1: characteristics and traits. And this was not the world's first
Speaker 1: attempt to classify and categorize life on Earth by any means.
Speaker 1: There's evidence of classification systems in ancient Chinese and Egyptian texts,
Speaker 1: and Aristotle and his contemporaries created basic taxonomies around the
Speaker 1: third and four centuries b C. But Linnaeus established a
Speaker 1: system that's at the heart of what's still used today.
Speaker 1: It initially described three kingdoms, animal, vegetable and mineral, with
Speaker 1: life in the plant and animal kingdoms arranged by class order, genus, species,
Speaker 1: and variety. And as I said earlier, there was a
Speaker 1: hierarchy to all of this. Animals were of the highest rank,
Speaker 1: and then plants, and then minerals. This idea of a
Speaker 1: hierarchy then carried through each of the kingdoms, so, for example,
Speaker 1: well mammals were up at the top of the animals,
Speaker 1: humans were up at the top of the mammals. These
Speaker 1: hierarchical ideas also went on to form the basis of
Speaker 1: scientific racism when they were used to categorize groups of
Speaker 1: people from different parts of the world. In the tenth
Speaker 1: edition of Systeminature, Linnaeus divided the animal world into mammalia
Speaker 1: or mammals a vis or birds, amphibia or amphibians, which
Speaker 1: also included reptiles, pisces or fish, insecta or insects, and vermes,
Speaker 1: which translates to worms but was kind of a catch
Speaker 1: all for invertebrate animals that also didn't have an exo skeleton.
Speaker 1: Warm blooded animals whose hearts had to atrea and two
Speaker 1: ventricles were mammals if they gave birth to live young,
Speaker 1: and birds if they lay eggs. Cold blooded animals whose
Speaker 1: hearts had one atrium and one ventricle were amphibians if
Speaker 1: they breathe through lungs, and fish if they breathe through gills.
Speaker 1: As he described each class in more detail. Linnaeus also
Speaker 1: noted that mammals fed their young through lactiferous teets. The
Speaker 1: Latin word mamma or breast, is the root of the
Speaker 1: word mammal, So this all suggest that in Lenaeus's mind,
Speaker 1: the key features of mammals what was worth naming them
Speaker 1: after was milk production and females. Generally speaking, today's scientific
Speaker 1: taxonomy has more categories at every level and more precise
Speaker 1: methods for determining what goes where than Linnaeus's original work did.
Speaker 1: But this progression has been about more than just adding
Speaker 1: more specific and accurate factual details. Linnaeus and his contemporaries
Speaker 1: were also working from the idea that life was just
Speaker 1: as it had always been. The idea of evolution over
Speaker 1: time did not really enter into it for more than
Speaker 1: a century. Instead, Linnaeus framed his work as the categorization
Speaker 1: of God's creations as God had made them, with that
Speaker 1: work reflecting God's intentions. God had created all these plants
Speaker 1: and animals. They had been in their present state from
Speaker 1: the time of their creation, so by carefully examining them
Speaker 1: in Linnaeus's mind, you could find an observable, sortable pattern
Speaker 1: that demonstrated the will of God. So with that worldview
Speaker 1: in mind, when Europeans started encountering some of Australia's more
Speaker 1: unique wildlife, they really just did not know what to
Speaker 1: make of it. They defied categorization. You can see this
Speaker 1: confusion in one of the earliest written descriptions of the
Speaker 1: platypus in English, in an Account of the English Colony
Speaker 1: in New South Wales from its first settlement in seventy
Speaker 1: eight to August eighteen o one, with remarks on the dispositions, customs, manners,
Speaker 1: etcetera of the native inhabitants of that country, to which
Speaker 1: are added some particulars of New Zealand. That was written
Speaker 1: by David Collins. Collins had been born in London, had
Speaker 1: arrived in Australia with the first fleet in seventeen eighties six,
Speaker 1: and he served as Deputy Judge Advocate and eventually became
Speaker 1: Lieutenant Governor of New South Wales. He published this book
Speaker 1: in eighteen o two, and in volume two he listed
Speaker 1: a number of the different animals that had been observed
Speaker 1: in the colonies earliest years, before going on to say
Speaker 1: that more recently, quote an amphibious animal of the mole
Speaker 1: species had been spotted on the shore of a lake.
Speaker 1: Collins went on to describe this animal, and that was
Speaker 1: accompanied by a drawing of it by Captain John Hunter,
Speaker 1: who by this point had become Governor of New South Wales.
Speaker 1: Collins described the animal's small eyes and clawed, webbed feet
Speaker 1: before saying quote, the tail of this animal was thick, short,
Speaker 1: and very fat. But the most extraordinary circumstance observed in
Speaker 1: its structure was its having, instead of the mouth of
Speaker 1: an animal, the upper and lower mandibles of a duck.
Speaker 1: By these it was enabled to supply it self with
Speaker 1: food like that bird in muddy places or on the
Speaker 1: banks of the lakes, in which its webbed feet enabled
Speaker 1: it to swim. While on shore it's long and sharp
Speaker 1: claws were employed in burrowing nature, thus providing for it
Speaker 1: in its double or amphibious character. These little animals had
Speaker 1: been frequently noticed rising to the surface of the water
Speaker 1: and blowing like the turtle. So this was a mole
Speaker 1: and a duck and a turtle. It's just not what
Speaker 1: people were expecting when they showed up in Australia. When
Speaker 1: naturalists in Europe received specimens of the platypus from Hunter,
Speaker 1: They were similarly perplexed by what they were looking at,
Speaker 1: and we will have more on that. After a quick
Speaker 1: sponsor break in, Captain John Hunter sent a sketch of
Speaker 1: the water mole to the Literary and Philosophical Society d
Speaker 1: in Newcastle upon time, along with a preserved skin from
Speaker 1: one of the animals. This made its way to George Shaw,
Speaker 1: keeper of the Natural History collections at the British Museum
Speaker 1: which is now the Natural History Museum, but at first
Speaker 1: Show was really not convinced that the skin that he
Speaker 1: had received was authentic. He very carefully started looking for
Speaker 1: signs of stitching, thinking that maybe had somebody had sowed
Speaker 1: a duck's bill onto a mole's body. Of course, he
Speaker 1: found no such evidence, because it was a platypus in
Speaker 1: se Shaw teamed up with illustrator Frederick P. Noder to
Speaker 1: produce the Naturalist's Miscellany, or colored figures of natural objects
Speaker 1: drawn and described immediately from nature. In this Shaw wrote, quote,
Speaker 1: of all the mammalia yet known, it seems the most
Speaker 1: extraordinary in its confirmation, exhibiting the perfect resemblance of the
Speaker 1: beak of a duck engrafted on the head of a quadruped.
Speaker 1: So accurate is the similitude that, at first view it
Speaker 1: naturally excites the idea of some deceptive preparation by artificial means.
Speaker 1: The very epidermist proportions seratures, manner of opening, and other particulars,
Speaker 1: is the beak of a shoveler or other broad builled
Speaker 1: species of duck presenting themselves to the view. Nor is it,
Speaker 1: without the most minute and rigid examination, that we can
Speaker 1: persuade ourselves of its being the real beak or snout
Speaker 1: of a quadruped. This work goes on to say, quote,
Speaker 1: the body is depressed and has some resemblance to that
Speaker 1: of an otter in miniature. It is covered with a
Speaker 1: very thick, soft and beaver like fur, and is of
Speaker 1: a moderately dark brown above subfruginous white beneath. The head
Speaker 1: is flattish and rather small than large. The mouth or snout,
Speaker 1: as before observed, so exactly resembles that of some broad
Speaker 1: build species of duck, that it might be mistaken for such.
Speaker 1: Shaw's doubts about what he's looking at are clear. He
Speaker 1: wrote quote on a subject so extraordinarily as the present,
Speaker 1: A degree of skepticism is not only pardonable but laudable.
Speaker 1: And I ought, perhaps to acknowledge that I almost doubt
Speaker 1: the testimony of my own eyes with respect to the
Speaker 1: structure of this animal's beak. Yet must confess that I
Speaker 1: can perceive no appearance of any deceptive preparation. And the
Speaker 1: edges of the rictus, the insertion, etcetera, when tried by
Speaker 1: the test of maceration in water, so as to render
Speaker 1: every part completely movable, seemed perfectly natural. Nor can the
Speaker 1: most accurate examination of expert anatomists discover any deception in
Speaker 1: this particular. Shaw's work here predated David Collins's account of
Speaker 1: the English colony that we read from earlier, so this
Speaker 1: was the first thorough description of a platypus and English writing.
Speaker 1: Shaw also made the first attempt at giving this animal
Speaker 1: a name, which was Platypus anatoust which roughly translated to
Speaker 1: flat footed duck. In eighteen hundred, Thomas Buick published a
Speaker 1: wood engraving of a platypus in the adenda to the
Speaker 1: fourth edition of A General History of Quadrupeds. He didn't
Speaker 1: name the animal, though the engraving was just titled an
Speaker 1: amphibious Animal. In the adenda, he described both the amphibious
Speaker 1: animal and the wombat, which he calls a wombatch. With
Speaker 1: ach ending. He says the aquatic animal quote seems to
Speaker 1: be an animal, Suey Gennaris. It appears to possess a
Speaker 1: threefold nature, that of a fish, a bird, and a quadruped,
Speaker 1: and it is related to nothing that we have hitherto seen.
Speaker 1: We shall not attempt to arrange it in any of
Speaker 1: the useful modes of classification, but content ourselves with giving
Speaker 1: the description of both these curious animals as they have
Speaker 1: been transmitted to us. Suey Gennaris means unique. In eighteen hundred,
Speaker 1: also German physician and naturalist Johann Friedrich Blumenbach received a
Speaker 1: platypus skin from Hunter as well. He did his own
Speaker 1: study of it, and since he knew the name platypus
Speaker 1: had already been used on a type of beetle in,
Speaker 1: he chose a different name, Ornithoryncus paradoxus, or paradoxical bird snout.
Speaker 1: Eventually this became Ornithoryncus anatinus, combining the genus that Blumenbach
Speaker 1: had coined with the species from Shaw's name. Even though
Speaker 1: platypus was only briefly part of the proposed scientific name
Speaker 1: for this animal. It really stuck around as the common
Speaker 1: name it outlasted. Lots of other names were things like
Speaker 1: water mole. It just don't have the same beautiful ring.
Speaker 1: These were by far not the only Europeans trying to
Speaker 1: study the platypus, something that was inherently challenging. Most of
Speaker 1: them could not personally make the trip to Australia, and
Speaker 1: they were practically on the other side of the planet
Speaker 1: from where platypuses were, so they had to rely on
Speaker 1: specimens scent by but living in Australia or procured by
Speaker 1: expeditions to the continent. In addition to the time and
Speaker 1: effort involved with that, specimens were often damaged in transit.
Speaker 1: The first skin that George Shaw received was pretty badly
Speaker 1: desiccated by the time he got it. Plus, the ships
Speaker 1: that carried these specimens to Europe typically traveled through waters
Speaker 1: that were also home to ships from Eastern Asia, where
Speaker 1: people were known to use taxidermy to create really convincing
Speaker 1: representations of hybrid animals. These included things like P. T.
Speaker 1: Barnum's Fiji Mermaid, which was the head and torso of
Speaker 1: a monkey sewn to the tail of a fish and
Speaker 1: was reportedly purchased from Japanese sailors. The platypus itself already
Speaker 1: seemed like an improbable animal, so the existence of these
Speaker 1: Taxi Army specimens at it just a whole layer of
Speaker 1: complication and skepticism. Whenever people received do specimens, and when
Speaker 1: researchers did get their hands on equality specimen to study,
Speaker 1: sometimes their findings just made things even more confusing. Outwardly,
Speaker 1: the platypus looked mostly like a mammal except for that
Speaker 1: bird like bill. But in eighteen o two, British surgeon
Speaker 1: and Royal Society fellow Sir Everard Home dissected a platypus
Speaker 1: and found that the male had internal testes, that is
Speaker 1: a trait that's common to reptiles, not mammals. He also
Speaker 1: found that both males and females had a cloaca, that is,
Speaker 1: one orifice to the outside of the body for both
Speaker 1: digestive waste and for reproductive products. That was again something
Speaker 1: that had been found in birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fish,
Speaker 1: but not in mammals. Not long after Home published work
Speaker 1: on these discoveries, Etienne Jeffroy Saint Hilaire of France coined
Speaker 1: the term monetary to describe both the platypus and the Echidnea,
Speaker 1: deriving the name from Home's discovery of these animals having
Speaker 1: a cloaca. He suggested the monotreams belonged in their own class,
Speaker 1: which he named monotrema. The presence of a cloaca raised
Speaker 1: lots of questions about platypus reproduction. Sir Joseph Banks tasked
Speaker 1: botanical collector George Kayley with going to Australia to look
Speaker 1: into these questions for both the platypus and the Achidna.
Speaker 1: Kayley developed relationships with Aboriginal people to try to learn
Speaker 1: what they already knew. In a eight O three he
Speaker 1: wrote to Banks to say that one man had told
Speaker 1: him that the platypus laid eggs deep underground, but he
Speaker 1: had no physical evidence to prove it. And another pressing
Speaker 1: question was whether platypus is produced milk to feed their young.
Speaker 1: According to scientific understanding at the time, only mammals did that.
Speaker 1: But if platypus has laid eggs, as Kaylee's source had reported, then,
Speaker 1: according to the then current understanding, no mammals did that.
Speaker 1: As a side note, there are some birds that produce
Speaker 1: a milk like substance in a part of their esophagus
Speaker 1: known as the crop. It's no as crop milk or
Speaker 1: pigeon milk, and it plays a similar role to mammals
Speaker 1: milk and nourishing young in the earliest days of their life.
Speaker 1: But that is not what we're talking about here. Now.
Speaker 1: That is a different thing. Because of these questions about
Speaker 1: eggs and milk, though, various experts took the same approach
Speaker 1: as Etienne Geoffroy Saint Hilaire had done, proposing that the
Speaker 1: platypus belonged in the entirely new category. Jehan Baptiste la
Speaker 1: Barc of France proposed the new class called proto Heria
Speaker 1: in eighteen o nine for both platypuses and a kidneys,
Speaker 1: and French zoologist Johann Carl Wilhelm Illiger proposed one called
Speaker 1: Reptantia in eighteen eleven. In eighteen seventeen, French scientist George
Speaker 1: Cuvier placed the platypus and the echidna in a new
Speaker 1: genus within the order eden Tata, which was already home
Speaker 1: to ant eaters and splats, but Cuvier also noted there
Speaker 1: still needed to be an examination of these purported eggs.
Speaker 1: We have mostly been talking about people working from Europe,
Speaker 1: but researchers were at work in Australia as well. Botanical
Speaker 1: collector Sir John Jamison was born in Ireland and moved
Speaker 1: to Australia after inheriting property there in eighteen eleven. In
Speaker 1: eighteen sixteen, he wrote of the platypus quote the female
Speaker 1: is oviparous and lives in burrows in the ground, so
Speaker 1: that it is seldom seen either on shore or in
Speaker 1: the water. This was based on his own observations and
Speaker 1: he was both respected and trained in medicine. But the
Speaker 1: scientific community still wanted proof, and that was challenging because
Speaker 1: those burrows which did exist were hard to find and
Speaker 1: hard to get into. In the eighteen twenties, German anatomus
Speaker 1: Johann Meckel published four influential studies on the platypus. He
Speaker 1: described the venom gland in males and the mammary glands
Speaker 1: and females, although he didn't see any signs of those
Speaker 1: mammary glands being connected to nipples. Then, in eighteen thirty two,
Speaker 1: Lauderdale Maud of Scotland published two papers describing both the
Speaker 1: mammary glands and the milk production in a live platypus
Speaker 1: British comparative. Anatomist Richard Owen, who would go on to
Speaker 1: coin the term dinosaur, confirmed the presence of mammary glands
Speaker 1: in his own paper in eighteen thirty two, including noting
Speaker 1: that they seemed to be enlarged in specimens that also
Speaker 1: showed evidence of having recent activity in their ovaries. That
Speaker 1: in eighteen thirty three, biologist George Bennett discovered that platypus
Speaker 1: milk left the body through pores, sort of like sweat does,
Speaker 1: and then it collected on the abdomen for the young
Speaker 1: to drink. For some naturalists, this added up to conclusive
Speaker 1: evidence that the platypus lactated, and only mammals lactate, so
Speaker 1: platypuses were definitely mammals, and at least for some, that
Speaker 1: was also enough to answer the question of platypuses laid eggs,
Speaker 1: because mammals do not lay eggs, so if platypuses were mammals,
Speaker 1: they did not lay eggs. But others, including Etienne Jeffrey,
Speaker 1: concluded that Michael and mad had to be mistaken. Maybe
Speaker 1: those glands were producing some kind of skin lubricant rather
Speaker 1: than milk. This is kind of the same logic, only
Speaker 1: in reverse. Jeffrey had concluded that platypuses lay eggs, and
Speaker 1: that meant that they simply could not produce milk. It
Speaker 1: was impossible your if then statements are all messy. This
Speaker 1: led to a lot of division and dispute among naturalists,
Speaker 1: as various men who had published work on platypuses tried
Speaker 1: to defend their reputations in the face of other seemingly
Speaker 1: contradictory work, and of course most of this was ignoring
Speaker 1: the observations of Aboriginal people and at this point some
Speaker 1: European colonists who reported the platypuses definitely laid eggs. To
Speaker 1: be clear, this testimony was not always consistent. There were
Speaker 1: language and cultural barriers at work, among other things. But overall,
Speaker 1: besides just wanting physical evidences proof, the scientific community was
Speaker 1: generally dismissive of anything Aboriginal people reported. Charles Darwin stopped
Speaker 1: in Sydney in eighteen thirty six at the end of
Speaker 1: his voyage aboard the Beagle. While in Australia, he saw
Speaker 1: platypuses for himself, including one that had been shot by
Speaker 1: a member of his expedition, and in the years that followed,
Speaker 1: Platypuss came up in his letters to his colleagues as
Speaker 1: he was sort of thinking through his ideas on natural selection.
Speaker 1: Darwin later used the platypus as an example in on
Speaker 1: the Origin of Species in eighteen fifty nine, in a
Speaker 1: discussion of how animals traits influenced how people classified them,
Speaker 1: even if those traits were not necessarily the most important ones.
Speaker 1: Quote if the orna thorncas had been covered with feathers
Speaker 1: instead of hair, this external and trifling character would I
Speaker 1: think have been considered by naturalists as important an aid
Speaker 1: in determining the degree of affinity of this strange creature
Speaker 1: to birds and reptiles, as an approach instructure in anyone
Speaker 1: internal and important organ The work of Darwin and his
Speaker 1: successors would eventually put the platypus in context based on
Speaker 1: how it evolved over time and how that was related
Speaker 1: to the evolution of other animals. But in eighteen thirty six,
Speaker 1: when he was in Sydney, there were still far more
Speaker 1: questions than answers and we'll talk more about that after
Speaker 1: we pause for a sponsor break. As we said earlier,
Speaker 1: some nineteenth century researchers saw lactation and egg laying as
Speaker 1: mutually exclusive animals simply could not do both of those things.
Speaker 1: But for others establishing that the platypus did lactate, that
Speaker 1: didn't rule out egg laying. Instead, it made this an
Speaker 1: e been more important question to definitively answer. But eyewitness
Speaker 1: testimony of platypuses with eggs was not enough, because it's like,
Speaker 1: what if those were some other animals eggs and the
Speaker 1: platypus just happened to be near them. I mean, that's
Speaker 1: a sure that could happen. Sometimes people found egg fragments
Speaker 1: in platypus burrows, but that also wasn't conclusive, because theoretically
Speaker 1: a platypus might eat eggs, those could be the remnants
Speaker 1: of its food. So researchers wanted to find a pregnant
Speaker 1: platypus or one in the process of laying an egg,
Speaker 1: or an egg that contained what was clearly a developing
Speaker 1: platypus embryo. Researchers had already killed a lot of platypuses
Speaker 1: for research in the first decades of the nineteenth century,
Speaker 1: but attempts to meet these specific criteria led them to
Speaker 1: kill a lot more Yeah, and it was more specifically
Speaker 1: destructive because they were specifically looking for females. We mentioned
Speaker 1: earlier that cleverly made East Asian taxid army specimens had
Speaker 1: led to some skepticism about whether platypus specimens were genuine,
Speaker 1: and when it came to this question of whether platypuses
Speaker 1: lay eggs, incorrect eggs specimens had the same effect. Both
Speaker 1: Aboriginal people and colonists submitted samples that were purportedly platypus eggs,
Speaker 1: but they turned out to belong to completely different animals,
Speaker 1: including tortoises, lizards, and snakes. It's really not clear whether
Speaker 1: any of this was intentional or just a case of
Speaker 1: mistaken identity. Also, the question wasn't just do platypuses lay
Speaker 1: eggs or do they give birth to live young. Some
Speaker 1: animals are ovo viviparous, meaning they produce eggs, but the
Speaker 1: eggs develop inside the mother's body, either hatching inside the
Speaker 1: body or immediately after the egg is laid. So did
Speaker 1: the platypus give birth to live young that had been
Speaker 1: nourished through a placenta like a mammal, or did the
Speaker 1: platypus produce eggs? And if eggs were involved, did they
Speaker 1: develop and hatch inside or outside the body? Past podcast
Speaker 1: subject Jules Verreaux is going to be an upcoming Saturday
Speaker 1: Classic spent fifteen months in Tasmania, much of that time
Speaker 1: studying platypuses. Based on this research, he concluded that the
Speaker 1: platypus was over viviparous in He also wrote, quote the
Speaker 1: order the rincus as an animal bizarre of structure and
Speaker 1: offers numerous analogies with a host of different species and
Speaker 1: even classes. And its external form it resembles in some
Speaker 1: degree the mole as to its body, the beaver as
Speaker 1: to its tail, and the duck as to its beak.
Speaker 1: Its internal structure, more astonishing, still resembles that of certain
Speaker 1: reptiles and appears to form a link between mammals and lizards.
Speaker 1: Richard Owen directed George Bennett of the Australian Museum to
Speaker 1: hunt for female platypuses either pregnant or with eggs. Bennett
Speaker 1: had previously dissected female platypuses and found eggs in their uteruses,
Speaker 1: but none of those eggs contained any embryos, so they
Speaker 1: didn't offer any insight into whether the young might hatch
Speaker 1: from eggs or be born alive. But Bennett was concerned
Speaker 1: about this idea, fearing for the future of the species
Speaker 1: if researchers indiscriminately killed females to try to answer this
Speaker 1: egg question. Bennett was also concerned about the killing of
Speaker 1: Australian animals more generally. In eighteen sixty he wrote Gatherings
Speaker 1: of a Naturalist in Australasia being observations principally on the
Speaker 1: animal and vegetable productions of New South Wales, New Zealand
Speaker 1: and some of the austral Islands, And in the preface
Speaker 1: to this he said, quote, unless the hand of man
Speaker 1: be stayed from their destruction, the ornitho ryncus and the echidna,
Speaker 1: the emu and the megapodius, like the dodo moa, and
Speaker 1: no tortoise will shortly exist only in the pages of
Speaker 1: the natural list. The effort to find platypus eggs or
Speaker 1: pregnant platypus is continued for decades without clear success. Then
Speaker 1: in eighteen sixty four, two miners brought a female platypus
Speaker 1: to gold receiver George Rumby. Rumby reported that she laid
Speaker 1: two eggs while closed up in a gin create, but
Speaker 1: he wasn't sure that this was normal for the platypus.
Speaker 1: He thought that the fear involved with being shut up
Speaker 1: in that gin create may have caused her to essentially
Speaker 1: miscarry her eggs. In eighteen eighty two, British biologist and
Speaker 1: embryologist Francis Maitland Balfour, known as Frank, suggested that William
Speaker 1: Hay Calledwell traveled to Australia to study the egg question.
Speaker 1: Caldwell had graduated from Cambridge in eighteen eighty and had
Speaker 1: been teaching comparative anatomy. Not long after Balfour made this suggestion,
Speaker 1: he died while mountain climbing in the Swiss Alps. A
Speaker 1: Traveling Studentship was named in his honor, and Caldwell became
Speaker 1: its first recipient. Caldwell used the money and prestige that
Speaker 1: came with the studentship, along with the backing of the
Speaker 1: Royal Society, to travel to Australia and to study several
Speaker 1: of its animals, including platypus, is kidneas and lungfish. On
Speaker 1: August nine four, after a four months search assisted by
Speaker 1: Aboriginal people, Calledwell shot a female platypus. There was an
Speaker 1: egg nearby, one that was presumably hers. He also found
Speaker 1: an egg in the mouth of her uterus, which he
Speaker 1: described as being at a stage equal to a thirty
Speaker 1: six hour chick. Caldwell reported his findings through a telegram
Speaker 1: that read quote monotreums oviparous ovum merro blastic. Merro Blastic
Speaker 1: is a term used to describe an egg's cleavage after
Speaker 1: it's been fertilized, So in lay terms, this essentially said
Speaker 1: monotreams lay eggs, and their eggs contain lots of yolk.
Speaker 1: Caldwell's message was passed along to a professor he knew
Speaker 1: at Sydney University, and from there to the British Association
Speaker 1: for the Advancement of Science meeting that was convening in Montreal,
Speaker 1: and then just a day after Calledwell's find, William Hawk,
Speaker 1: who was curator of the South Australian Museum, also found
Speaker 1: an eggshell in an achidnas pouch that led to confirmation
Speaker 1: that a kidnas also lay eggs. Pack presented his observation
Speaker 1: to the Royal Society of South Australia and Adelaide on
Speaker 1: the same day that Calledwell's discovery was announced at the
Speaker 1: British Association of the Advancement of Science meeting. Both those
Speaker 1: things happened on September two four. This finally conclusively answered
Speaker 1: the question of whether platypuses lay eggs. Yes, they do,
Speaker 1: and so do a kidnas. Today there are only five
Speaker 1: species of mammal known to lay eggs, which are platypuses,
Speaker 1: and then four different species of a kidnam. All of
Speaker 1: them are native to the Australian continent and it surrounding islands,
Speaker 1: and from an evolutionary standpoint, it's likely that they split
Speaker 1: off from other mammals more than two hundred million years ago.
Speaker 1: It was only after that point that other mammals evolved
Speaker 1: to give birth to live young. After his discovery of
Speaker 1: platypus eggs, Caldwell went on to do some incredibly destructive
Speaker 1: research into a kidness. He employed a huge team of
Speaker 1: Aboriginal people who captured and killed and estimated twelve hundred
Speaker 1: to four hundred kidnap between July and August of five.
Speaker 1: Caldwell's writing suggests that at least some of these were
Speaker 1: being used for food, but he was definitely encouraging this
Speaker 1: by paying them half a crown for each female specimen
Speaker 1: that they brought to him. He also wrote about this
Speaker 1: aboriginal crew in a really disparaging way, and he exploited
Speaker 1: them by raising the prices on the flour, sugar and
Speaker 1: tea that he sold to them based on how much
Speaker 1: he had paid them for a kidneys specimens. So if
Speaker 1: you brought him more specimens, he would will sell you
Speaker 1: the same amount of tea or sugar or whatever, but
Speaker 1: at a higher price based on how much he had
Speaker 1: paid for those animals. What a gym uh. This research
Speaker 1: into the nature of the platypus had taken ninety five
Speaker 1: years and an enormous amount of effort. In the words
Speaker 1: of George Bennett, quote of all the Australian mammalia, none
Speaker 1: has excited so much attention as the platypus or water mole,
Speaker 1: both from its peculiar form and the great desire events
Speaker 1: to ascertain the habits and economy of so singular a creature.
Speaker 1: He went on to say, quote, perhaps no animal in
Speaker 1: its first introduction into Europe, ever, gave rise to greater
Speaker 1: doubts as to its classification or excited deeper interests among naturalists,
Speaker 1: and interest fully maintained to the present day respecting its
Speaker 1: habits and economy than this enigmatical creature, which, from its
Speaker 1: external appearance as well as internal anatomy, may correctly be
Speaker 1: described as forming a connecting link between quadruped the bird
Speaker 1: and the reptile. Bennett wrote that in eighteen sixty, but
Speaker 1: that part about quote an interest fully maintained to the
Speaker 1: present day is still true. There's still a ton of
Speaker 1: ongoing research into the platypus, including the discovery that the
Speaker 1: platypus has biofluorescent fur that was announced in so As.
Speaker 1: We noted a lot of platypuses were killed during this
Speaker 1: research and also through hunting, habitat loss, and other factors
Speaker 1: in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Eventually, though every
Speaker 1: Australian state passed conservation laws to protect the platypus. The
Speaker 1: last of those laws went into effect in nineteen twelve.
Speaker 1: So today platypuses are listed as near threatened on the
Speaker 1: International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List of Threatened Species.
Speaker 1: Not the most upbeat place to land an episode, no,
Speaker 1: but I mean it's better than they're being think. I
Speaker 1: don't know if that uh. My point being, do you
Speaker 1: have a beat listener mail to accompany this? I do
Speaker 1: have listener mail. I have listener mail that is about Australia.
Speaker 1: UM something. I didn't make the connection until just now
Speaker 1: because I had two different listener mails to go with
Speaker 1: two different episodes, and I did not pay attention to
Speaker 1: which I put with which. So thanks for nota for
Speaker 1: this email that turned out to be super related to
Speaker 1: this episode. UH this says this was written back in
Speaker 1: August after an earlier Unearthed episode, and I flagged it
Speaker 1: to read on the show, and then I didn't read it,
Speaker 1: so nada said Dear Holly and Tracy, I hope this
Speaker 1: email finds you both well during these strange and unusual times.
Speaker 1: I've just caught up on the July Unearthed episodes, as
Speaker 1: I usually listen to podcasts while i'm driving, but I'm
Speaker 1: in lockdown in Melbourne, Australia and haven't really been going
Speaker 1: many places. I came across this interesting talk about archaeological
Speaker 1: digs taking place in Melbourne, and I thought it might
Speaker 1: be interesting for the Edibles Impotable section of the next Unearthed. Uh.
Speaker 1: I forgot to come back to it in time for
Speaker 1: the next on Earth, so I'm reading it now. There's
Speaker 1: a big infrastructure project currently on the go, and as
Speaker 1: part of the excavations for a new train station, the
Speaker 1: Victorian government conducted archaeological digs on the site prior to
Speaker 1: commencing construction work. This particular site was right at the
Speaker 1: heart of early Melbourne, including a cottage owned by the
Speaker 1: man who founded the city, John Batman. Side note Melbourne
Speaker 1: was almost called bat Mania after him. One of the
Speaker 1: places they were excavating had been a general store in
Speaker 1: the eighteen fifties, but suffered a catastrophic fire in eighteen
Speaker 1: fifty five. The shop was destroyed and much of the
Speaker 1: remains fell into the underground cellar, which was also full
Speaker 1: of stock. The fire was so destructive that they pretty
Speaker 1: much just covered over the seller and built over the top.
Speaker 1: The excavations revealed to look at an eighteen fifties grocery store,
Speaker 1: with everything in the cellar base sickly untouched since the
Speaker 1: night of the fire. This allowed insight into how grocery
Speaker 1: stores arranged their stock and also what kinds of items
Speaker 1: they were stalking Melbourne in the eighteen fifties was a
Speaker 1: frontier town, having only been established twenty years prior. Yet
Speaker 1: the shop with stocking a range of foods, including relatively
Speaker 1: exotic fruits, as well as luxury goods from England. The
Speaker 1: dig analysis included our Chao botanical research to determine the
Speaker 1: contents of pots and bottles, some of which still contained
Speaker 1: the bird remains of food and drinks. There's also remains
Speaker 1: of a cat, possibly kept in the store to catch
Speaker 1: mice that would otherwise spoil the goods. Uh. And then
Speaker 1: there was a link to the talk about all of this.
Speaker 1: Thank you for all the hard work that goes into
Speaker 1: researching and writing the shows. They're always interesting, even when
Speaker 1: it isn't a topic with which I'm familiar, which is
Speaker 1: lots ha ha. Take here and stay safe or not
Speaker 1: to thank you so much for this email. I'm sorry
Speaker 1: that I flagged it for follow up, and then I
Speaker 1: didn't look at my follow up flags for a very
Speaker 1: long time. Uh, and then I thought I need to
Speaker 1: I need to make sure I haven't missed anything which
Speaker 1: I had. So thank you so much for this note
Speaker 1: and for telling us about these spines. If you would
Speaker 1: like to send us a note, we're at History podcast
Speaker 1: that I heart radio dot com and we're all over
Speaker 1: social media at Missed in History. That's where you'll find
Speaker 1: our Facebook and Twitter, and Pinterest in Instagram, and you
Speaker 1: can subscribe to our show on the I heart radio
Speaker 1: app and wherever else you like to take your podcasts.
Speaker 1: Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of
Speaker 1: I heart Radio. For more podcasts from I heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows.