Everybody loves #Echidna Taxidermy Fails!
In #PlatypusMatters, I make the case that no species are more often inaccurately depicted in #taxidermy as #echidnas are.
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#PlatypusMatters
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The cover of "PlatypusMatters: The Extraordinary Story of Australian Mammals", depicting a photo of a platypus diving in blue water.
The multi-award winning🏅 #PlatypusMatters tells the story of the world's best animals - the #platypus & its Aussie buddies - exploring not only the incredible ways they live their lives, but also how the wider world came to know them, and how this history shapes their conservation today.
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The cover of "Natures Memory: Behind the Scenes at the World's Natural History Museums" by Jack Ashby, depicting a bright green snail shell on a black background.
The cover of "Platypus Matters: The Extraordinary Story of Australian Mammals" by Jack Ashby, depicting a photo of a platypus diving in blue water.
The cover of "Animal Kingdom: A Natural History in 100 Objects" by Jack Ashby, showing a several specimens (a taxidermy bird of paradise; a pinned bumblebee; a viper skull; a chimp skeleton; a pinned butterfly; and a preserved sea horse) on a green background
The cover of the children's book "Wild" by Jack Ashby, illustrated by Sara Boccaccini-Meadows, depicting many drawings of animals in forest background
Books make the best gifts🎁. Might I suggest these for the curious, inquisitive folk in your life:
🏛️ #NaturesMemory: Behind the Scenes at the World's Natural History #Museums.
🦘 #PlatypusMatters: The Extraordinary Story of Australian Mammals.
💯 Animal Kingdom: A Natural History in 100 Objects.
🦇 Wild
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The cover of PlatypusMatters: The Extraordinary Story of Australian Mammals by Jack Ashby. The image shows a platypus diving
A screenshot of a page of the book. It reads: "Shaw dithered about where they should be placed taxonom-ically, suggesting that a new genus may need to be created for them, but in the end decided to lump them in the same group – Myrmecophaga – as South America’s giant anteaters. He gave them the common name ‘porcupine ant- eater’, and they have otherwise become known as the ‘spiny anteater’, ‘Australian porcupine’ and ‘New Holland hedgehog’.* Over the years they were subsequently put in the same genus as porcupines and then platypuses, but eventually taxonomists followed Shaw’s original notion and gave them a name of their own. The one we have settled on is Tachyglossus, meaning ‘swift tongue’, with the species name aculeatus, or ‘prickly’. This is perfectly descriptive – echidna tongues can flick out 100 times in a minute in search of their insect prey.One of the strangest, most surprising and most fondly remembered social experiences of my life took place in the tiny township of Adventure Bay, on Bruny Island, off Tasmania’s south coast. Toby and I were there for the island’s incredible wildlife – particularly the abundant echidnas. We spent a couple of weeks sleeping in our car – a minuscule, ancient bright- yellow Holden Gemini – in the empty beach parking lot overlooking the Southern Ocean (it was, without exaggeration, * The etymology of the word echidna is an interesting one, as ékhidna in Ancient Greek means ‘viper’. The word ekhînos, meaning ‘hedgehog’ (or, if Latinised to echinus, also ‘sea urchin’), would make much more sense, but that doesn’t explain where the ‘d’ came from"
Want to know more about how #echidnas got their European names? Here's part of that story from my book #PlatypusMatters: The Extraordinary Story of Australian Mammals (the bit about why we can't explain that echidnas appear to have been named after vipers is in the footnote).
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As I argue in #PlatypusMatters, Australia has the world's best mammals, but is sadly the worst place on Earth to be a mammal, with the planet's worst #extinction rate.
The Christmas Island shrew is now the latest species to be officially declared extinct.
www.theguardian.com/environment/...
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A bookshop shelf display, showing Nature's Memory, with its cover facing out
A bookshop shelf, including Platypus Matters
A bookshop shelf, including Nature's Memory
A bookshop shelf, including Wild: A Family Guide to the Animal Kingdom
I know it seems conceited to look for your own books in every bookstore you pass, but after all that goes into writing a book, there really is a sense of accomplishment when you spot them out in the world. Really thrilled to see #NaturesMemory, #PlatypusMatters & WILD all across #Tasmania & #Sydney.
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A shop-display of books, including Platypus Matters: The Extraordinary Story of Australian Mammals, among other Tasmanian-themed publications
Platypus Matters on an armchair in front of a fireplace
Platypus Matters on a mossy log next to a dark stream
I've never been more pleased to see #PlatypusMatters on sale than in the little shop at #CradleMountain Lodge. I started writing it by the fire here on evenings after #fieldwork, and have spent countless hours sat on this log - just minutes away - watching for #platypuses It has come full circle 🥰
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How and why Australian mammals have consistently been written-off by much of the world is the key theme of my book #PlatypusMatters, and the brilliant @zoekeansci.bsky.social has written a great article on this topic (& thanks to her for the shout-out!).🦘🐨 Have a read:
www.abc.net.au/news/science...
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No live #platypus has ever reached the UK, but in #PlatypusMatters I share how, at the height of WW2, Churchill asked Australia to send him one. The story goes that it died of shock when its ship was attacked, but new research suggests that may not be the whole story:
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
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The scientific establishment only accepted that some mammals *can* lay eggs when Cambridge embryologist William Caldwell - working with 150 First Nations people - found platypuses & echidnas with just-lain eggs. We rediscovered his specimens in 2022. #PlatypusMatters
www.cam.ac.uk/stories/redi...
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A black and white photo of Richard Owen
In my book #PlatypusMatters, I explain how prominent conservative European scientists like Richard Owen fought hard against the idea of egg-laying mammals. I think they considered the idea that a mammal could do something so "reptilian" as lay eggs was morally challenging, but also..
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An echidna in dappled sunlight on leaf-litter
An echidna in dappled sunlight on leaf-litter
An echidna among grass and ferns, looking face-on into the camera
The cover of Platypus Matters: The Extraordinary Story of Australian Mammals, by Jack Ashby
Happy #WorldEchidnaDay to the world's second best animal (nothing beats a #platypus). #Echidnas are spiny, digging anteaters, & if threatened, sink vertically into the soil by doing jazz-hands with all four feet. My book #PlatypusMatters tells their story, & how the world came to know them. #echidna
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The cover of Platypus Matters: The Extraordinary Story of Australian Mammals by Jack Ashby, showing a photo of a platypus diving
Aww there's a lush new ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Amazon review of #PlatypusMatters. It really means a lot to know it resonates 😊
"Absolutely excellent book about absolutely excellent subject. Uses platypus as a wedge to learn so much about mammal evolution, diversity, and the natural and human history of Australia."
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A black and white engraving of a New Guinean dusky pademelon by De Bruign in 1711. It is the first confirmed European depiction of a macropod.
There were several meetings between Europeans and hopping #marsupials before James Cook in 1770, but none were #kangaroos. I wrote about their (terrible) descriptions in my book #PlatypusMatters, and here:
blogs.ucl.ac.uk/museums/2015...
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International Day of Biodiversity is the perfect opportunity to remind ourselves that we as a species are profoundly lucky to be on the earth at the same time as the greatest animal that has ever evolved.
#BiodiversityDay #Platypus #fieldwork #Tasmania #PlatypusMatters #MammalWatching #WildOz
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A section of the book Platypus Matters. It reads: My feelings can readily be imagined. I would rather have lost all of my shipment of a very valuable cargo of birds, Mattersanimals, and reptiles. This was not because the platypus was worth more (far from it), but because it was my ambition to bring one alive to America. I am glad to say that good fortune eventually favoured me, since on June 30, 1922, I landed in San Francisco with the first living platypus ever brought to America.
#OTD in 1922, animal-dealer Ellis Joseph left Sydney with five live #platypuses. In #PlatypusMatters, I explain that one died whilst still in southern Australian waters. Two succumbed to a massive wave crushing their tank soon after. A fourth died while the ship was in Hawaii. One made it. He wrote:
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The cover of Nature's Memory: Behind the Scenes at the World's Natural History Museums, showing a bright green snail shell on a black background
The cover of Wild, with many illustrations of animals by Sara Boccaccini Meadows. A panda and giraffes are prominent.
Books like buses! It's been 3 years since #PlatypusMatters was first published, and then two new books come out at once! #NaturesMemory explores the secrets of the world's natural history #museums; and WILD encourages kids to notice how & why the same features repeatedly appear in different animals.
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Two books on a wooden table: The Platypus and the Mermaid by Harriet Ritvo, and The Platypus by Tom Grant.
A freeze-dried platypus
New additions to the #platypus library! I'll particularly treasure these as they're gifts from Adrian Friday - the man who first got me into #platypuses when I was a student in @camzoology.bsky.social 24 years ago, with the way he talked about this stunning freeze-dried platypus. 😍 #PlatypusMatters
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A screen shot of the first four paragrahs of a Guardian article with an echidna photo at the top. The words "peculiar", "unusual" and "oddity" are all highlighted.
Platypuses & #echidnas are obviously the best things to have ever evolved, but THEY AREN'T ANY WEIRDER THAN ANY OTHER KIND OF ANIMAL.
As I argue in my book #PlatypusMatters, calling them "odd" is a subconcious colonial hangover. Cool story about their origins tho:
www.theguardian.com/environment/...
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A freeze-dried platypus
Preserved eggs, foetus and young hatchling (called a puggle) of an echidna
It is a well-known scientific fact that the best Easter egg-laying animals are mammals: the #platypus and #echidnas.🥚
The idea that #mammals could lay eggs was one of the most controversial debates in 19th-century zoology, as it undermined how western scientists classified animals.
#PlatypusMatters
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Screenshot of a page of Platypus Matters by Jack Ashby. It reads: "I could continue this list of excellent wombat skills and provide some scientific reasoning for why I think they are top; however, I have to admit that my attraction to them is not very scientific. The truth is, I am most drawn to animals that waddle – animals for which one could imagine an internal monologue or theme tune of slow, bumbling, rhythmic muttering as they move. If such an animal had a musical theme in Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf, for example, it would go ‘bomp- te- bomb, bombety- bomp- te- bomb’ over and over as it walked. That is what I imagine wombats humming to them-selves as they walk, and that’s why I like them."
YOU ARE NOT THE ONLY ONE! 😀
This is a para from my book #PlatypusMatters: The Extraordinary Story of Australian Mammals:
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Would it be terribly lazy/egotistical of me to suggest my own book, #PlatypusMatters? 😅 (Be warned, I've also made it my life's mission - particularly through this book to get people to stop calling platypuses weird! 😉)
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A pile of the book Platypus Matters
I hadn't spotted that #PlatypusMatters has now come out in paperback in the US! It's got excellent book-feel! 😍
(The UK/Australian version is also out in all formats!)
The perfect way to spend Christmas gift vouchers 📚
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I'm loving seeing the pics of #PlatypusMatters that appeared in people's Christmas stockings! 🎁📚
There's surely no better present than the gift of #platypuses! 🤩
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The cover of Jack Ashby's book "Platy[pus Matters" - a platypus diving down underwater, against a blue background
Don't worry, it's not too late to tell everyone you want #PlatypusMatters: The Extraordinary Story of Australian Mammals for Christmas.
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I truly love a real bookshop, but for reasons I can't explain, finding my book on sale in airport bookstores feels more real than finding it in proper classy, curated bookstores. Thanks, Sydney Airport! ☺️ #PlatypusMatters
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