The paradoxical platypus

Extract

The story of the discovery of the platypus (Figure 1) teaches us much that is relevant to the nature of scientific evidence, orthodoxy, entrenched authority, the role of personalities in science, the slow overthrow of old mores, national rivalries, prejudices and priorities, the strictures of animal classification, what it takes to be described as a mammal, conservation, and extinction. A rivalry that pitted nation against nation, naturalist against naturalist, and professional against amateur endured for 85 years before the true nature of the platypus was revealed. Long after the evidence was wrested from Nature half a world away from where the debate raged, professional biologists continued to argue about this paradoxical creature. How did such a situation arise?

Discovery and description

Platypuses—duckbills, watermoles, or duckmoles, as the European settlers of New South Wales called them—are found only in Australian freshwater lakes and streams. David Collins, who arrived with the First Fleet as Deputy Judge-Advocate, provided an early description in the second edition of An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales: