Amazon.com Review
Consider the platypus, that curious Australian creature that seems neither fish nor reptile nor mammal, but that has characteristics seemingly borrowed from all over the animal kingdom. Charles Darwin certainly considered it, puzzling over the platypus in the light of the rest of the world's creatures, and remarking, "Surely two distinct Creators must have been at work."
Australian historian of science Ann Moyal offers plenty of natural-historical information on the platypus in this slender, enjoyable book. What's more, she examines the sometimes shocked reactions the platypus inspired in European naturalists when they first saw specimens of the creature at the dawn of the 19th century. For, Moyal writes, the platypus almost single-handedly (or, perhaps better, single-web-footedly) overturned the prevailing classification of animals according to great-chain-of-being models; with its hodgepodge of physical traits and behaviors, it offered "an unexpected bridge between the categories of mammal/quadruped and reptiles and birds." That bridge helped set evolutionary theory on a new course; as Moyal writes, the platypus played an explicit role in Charles Darwin's ideas on isolation, species diversity, and natural selection, and he branded it a prime example of a "living fossil" that had managed to find an unoccupied ecological niche and live, relatively undisturbed, while fellow creatures marched toward extinction.
Scientists continue to study the platypus, Moyal writes in closing, for its remarkable traits, including a seeming sixth sense that helps it locate its prey in the underwater darkness. Her graceful book sheds new light on the history of biology and ought to earn Ornithorhynchus anatinus many new admirers. --Gregory McNamee
From Publishers Weekly
Everyone knows the platypus looks bizarre: its duck's beak, webbed feet, fur, swimming skills, secretive lifestyle and egg-laying talents combine to make the Australian mammal an object of fascination for would-be observers around the globe. Yet few of the monotreme's admirers have seen one in the wild; fewer still know the key roles platypuses have played in theories of evolution and in European concepts of Aussie life. Moyal a historian of science based in Canberra, Australia sets out to tell us all this and more in a cleanly written tome combining scientific curiosities with narrative history. Naturalists from Napoleonic France visited New Holland (Australia) in 1801, carrying wombats, emus and a platypus back to Paris, where astonished Europeans had trouble believing their eyes. Early 19th-century thinkers tried to arrange all the creatures they knew into a "Chain of Being," reflecting divine creation. The egg-laying, warm-blooded platypus and echidna (and their distant cousins, the marsupials) confounded all existing models, and hence sparked intense debate: did these critters really lay eggs? A "scattered company of amateur naturalists" tried hard for answers: the intrepid George Bennett, and later his son, found them, with consequences for the future of biology. Moyal's accessible account integrates this story with others: how was European racism bad for the duck-billed mammal? Who learned how to keep a captive platypus alive? And why, in the midst of World War II, did Australians take great pains to send a live one to Winston Churchill? Readers who care about Darwin and his successors, and readers who simply dig exotic animals, should enjoy Moyal's work: folks who belong in both categories won't be able to put it down. (Sept.)
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
