Richard Feidler

Jack Ashby is a British zoologist from Cambridge University's Zoological Museum who writes very candidly, If I sound excited about platypuses, it's because I am.

Jack Ashby is fascinated by the utterly distinctive creatures that have evolved on our island continent.

but nothing delights him as much as platypuses.

And it is platypuses, by the way, not platypi, because it's a Greek word and not a Latin one.

The British, when they first came to Australia, were confounded by the platypus, a creature that has a body like a mole, a bill like a duck, and feet like an otter, that lays eggs and yet suckles its young.

Well, all that just threw out all their systems of animal classification out of whack.

And the way they and the rest of the world dealt with their confusion was to all too often disparage Australia's wildlife as weird or even primitive.

Australia was seen by them as a place with joke animals and, alarmingly, no pre-existing humans.

Well, Jack Ashby doesn't think this is a very grown-up way to look at things.

He sees platypuses and echidnas and Tasmanian devils and all our other creatures as noble, beautiful and fascinating.

And he wants the world to know all about them.

Jack's book is called Platypus Matters, The Extraordinary Story of Australian Mammals.

Hi, Jack.

Hi, Richard.

Thanks for having me today.

Your museum in Cambridge, this is Darwin's museum.

What kind of stuff have you got in that museum?

So you've got stuff there from the voyage of the Beagle.

Have you got like a turtle or something or a tortoise from the Beagle?

So you're surrounded by all these wonderful specimens, and yet, and yet, and yet for you, it was the platypus that entirely enchanted you, Jack.