Jack Ashby

It's not boring.

You learn so much from these specimens.

But in the wild, you're there on the animal's terms.

There's nothing you can do to make them stay longer.

It is not.

So I think when, you know, the species was described by Europeans in Europe.

So they'd spent, they were sent dried specimens.

So once you sent this, they go leathery.

In fact, if you look at historic images of platypuses, where the bill joins the face, the bits that's supposed to cover the face, so the back of the bill folds over their face, it's kind of stuck upright and it's kind of at right angles to their bill.

You see this on historic drawings and then taxidermy from which

which have been copied from historic drawings, but actually it's soft and supple and leathery in life.

No, so it's got two little rods of bone running through it.

I think they look like an earwig's pincers as a skeleton, but then they're covered with this skin and it's soft and leathery.

But inside is the most astonishing sensory system of any mammal.

What do you mean?

They are platypuses, anachidnas, and one species of dolphin are the only mammals that can detect electricity.

So their bills have electroreceptors in them.

And the reason for that is, as I said, they close their eyes and ears underwater, but they can eat 700 grams a day of crayfish and worms.

It's a lot of worms.

How do they find this food?