Jack Ashby

But that doesn't make the whole species primitive.

We all have primitive features.

Legs, human legs are primitive features because we've evolved them from first fishes to walk on land.

But that doesn't make us primitive.

It's entirely subjective what we choose to say.

This is what set you apart.

And interestingly, with eggs and...

In platypuses, that's considered primitive.

But if you look at eggs in birds, birds also evolved, you know, retained eggs from their reptile-like ancestors, the dinosaurs.

Is that weird too?

It's so, so strange.

And that goes back to, again, 19th century descriptions who just write them off as animals with small brains and low intelligence.

And the small-brained idea, particularly for marsupials, was considered, was so pervasive that no one bothered to check until, it was 2010, my colleagues Anjali Goswami and Vera Weisbecker.

thought, hang on, let's actually see how big Australian mammals' brains are.

And they measured the brain capacities of a load of different mammals from across the world.

And they found that if you took out one group of animals, which have freakishly large brains, which are the primates, to take primates out of the equation, marsupials and placental mammals have the same size brains compared to their body mass.

And in fact, at small body sizes, marsupials have bigger brains.

So it's a complete nonsense to suggest that they're unintelligent.

But again, you watch TV shows and you watch a wombat on a TV show, on a documentary, you can guarantee that they'll have some kind of bumbling background music that kind of just suggests that they're a bit stupid.

I think so.