They form three exclusive groups, all convinced of their superiority: The animals with fur who can run across land, the birds who lay eggs, and the water creatures who can swim. In another story from the New South Wales Central Coast, the animals argue amongst themselves about who is the most important creature. She takes her babies up into the Warrumbungle mountains, thereby accounting for why platypus are only found in particular regions. In an origin story of the platypus from Northern New South Wales, their poor mother Gaygar is ostracized by the other ducks because of her bizarre-looking hatchlings, and is forced to leave her home on Narran Lake. The platypus was believed to be the offspring of a mother duck and a father water rat, accounting for its unusual characteristics – inheriting the duck-bill, webbed feet and egg-laying abilities of their mother, and the thick fur, claws and four legs of their father. Known as the ‘mallangong’, tambreet’ or ‘duliawarung’ to local indigenous peoples, Aboriginal story-telling traditions use myth to explain the unique appearance and behavioural characteristics of the platypus. Whilst it makes perfect sense that European observers would find the platypus strange, having never encountered anything like it in the Northern hemisphere outside of the bizarre chimerical creatures of mythology, it is perhaps more surprising that Aboriginal Dreamtime legends also describe the platypus as a peculiar exception within the animal realm. Even George Shaw, the first man to scientifically describe the platypus, admitted that “a degree of scepticism is not only pardonable, but laudable … I almost doubt the testimony of my own eyes.” Some considered it to be an elaborate hoax, and Scottish zoologist Robert Knox believed the creature to be the work of an inventive Asian taxidermist. Captain John Hunter of the Royal Navy sent a pelt and a sketch back to Britain in 1798, but the bizarre appearance of the creature baffled European naturalists. Ornithornhynchus anatinus, John Gould (1863).Īs an Australian native, the platypus has been known in Aboriginal culture for millennia – but it was not until 1797 that Europeans first encountered them. As it turned out, I wasn’t alone in my estimations of this remarkable and unique creature. This creature was truly weird, a kind of animal cut-and-paste that defied all of the categories that I tried to fit it into. But my system completely fell down when it came to the platypus. Kangaroos were a more difficult species to accommodate, with a face similar to a deer, and the hind legs of some sort of giant Alice-in-Wonderlandesque rabbit. As a curious 7-year-old recently emigrated from England, I tried to assimilate the unfamiliar Antipodean fauna into my limited understanding of the animal kingdom, largely through approximations: To me, the wombat was like a kind of stout, snub-nosed badger sugar gliders were reminiscent of squirrels and the echidna was a larger and longer-nosed version of the hedgehog. Growing up in Australia, I was fascinated by the native wildlife. I am, of course, describing Ornithorhynchus anatinus, or as it is more commonly known, the platypus. Some of you will probably have worked out what this mysterious animal is by now. I’ll give you another three clues: 4) it’s semi-aquatic 5) it has thick fur and 6) despite laying eggs, it suckles its young on milk. Ok, so those questions were a bit tricky. You probably guessed some sort of reptile, right? Wrong. I’m going to describe a creature, and you have to try and guess what it is, based on the following three clues: 1) it lays eggs 2) it has venomous claws and 3) it uses electroreception to assist it in catching prey under water.
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