Jack Ashby

Yeah, they're using this zoological standard.

And simply by being different to a placental mammal, like a cow or a human, they were just written off as being inferior to it.

And I think it very much was tied into the kind of colonial project of...

of kind of putting down everything in australia the people the landscape and habitats and climate and the wildlife and by tying the wildlife into this kind of terra nullius argument that there is nothing there of value um it helped justify the invasion and

As I say, every single scientific description is saying these are strange, weird, primitive, inferior animals.

And where that kind of everything is trying to kill you comes in, I think it's absolutely bonkers.

Yeah, America.

Exactly that.

It's really weird.

Other than Europe, or at least parts of Europe,

that Australia is the only continent that doesn't have any large land predators.

So it is the safest place.

I've spent the last couple of weeks in Tasmania on field work, and I'd be out every night on my own in the forest spotlighting for animals with absolutely no fear that I'm going to get eaten by a tiger or a bear or a wolf at any point.

It's pretty unlikely, unfortunately.

It is, absolutely, throughout the 19th century and 20th century.

But actually, I think it harks on today in that if you go to any museum, hopefully outside of Australia, go to any museum or read any newspaper article about Australian mammals, particularly platypuses, or go to watch a TV documentary,

The trope is these are strange animals.

They are weird.

Weird and wonderful, but nonetheless weird.

And no other continent, another large part of the world, has its wildlife treated in this way.