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Platypus The Extraordinary Story of How a Curious Creature Baffled the World Ann Moyal 9780801880520 Books

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Platypus The Extraordinary Story of How a Curious Creature Baffled the World Ann Moyal 9780801880520 Books

My 14yo son love platypodes (the correct Greek plural ☺)
He's read this book cover to cover several times.


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Platypus The Extraordinary Story of How a Curious Creature Baffled the World Ann Moyal 9780801880520 Books Reviews

The platypus is such a quiet and secretive creature, it is hard now to comprehend that during the nineteenth century it created a firestorm of controversy, or at least as much of a firestorm as academic biology endures. The extent of the controversy, and the history of science's dealings with the strange creature, are the subjects of _Platypus The Extraordinary Story of How a Curious Creature Baffled the World_ (Smithsonian Institution Press) by Ann Moyal. If you know little about the creature, you can learn plenty here, but more important is the story of how humans attempted to capture, understand, and classify the animal and how it came to play a role in the great debate over evolution.
The platypus was such an oddity that at first no one believed it could actually exist. With an animal that was an amphibian quadruped with webbed feet, fur, and the beak of a duck, it is not surprising that some suspected a hoax. Central to classifying the platypus were the two questions concerning reproduction did it produce live young, and did it produce milk for them? Richard Owen, the most influential naturalist before Darwin and who had an encyclopedic knowledge of anatomy of many species, was able to confirm the stories that the reclusive platypus did suckle its young, but the question of birth proved more troublesome. The obvious way to settle such a question would be to find a platypus home and see, but the retiring and removed nature of the creature prevented this for decades. Instead of suspending judgement on the question until this could be done, naturalists formed ranks on different sides, and argued over the issue in what seems now a useless and puzzling manner. Owen, originally a friend of Darwin and then a fierce opponent of evolution, tended to examine evidence to show his own view that the platypus had live birth, but it was not until 1884 that a naturalist shot a platypus which had laid an egg and had another coming down the cloaca. The long controversy was ended, and the aging Owen must have heard the news, but unfortunately his views on the discovery are unknown.
Moyal's book is beautifully illustrated, with pictures of the platypus as envisioned by naturalists through the centuries. It is full of interesting facts about one of the most peculiar creatures on the Earth, one which has yielded surprising findings even after the big controversies were settled. For instance, although there is no placenta to connect the young with the mother platypus, the egg within the uterus is nourished by absorption into its shell, a process which egg-laying birds and reptiles do not share. Another surprising finding, and this only in the last couple of decades, is that the distinctive bill of the platypus (and it isn't hard like a duck's, but soft and flexible) contains a battery of electroreceptors which are so sensitive they can detect the tiny muscle discharges of the shrimp and worms on which the platypus feeds. The platypus, as revealed in this well-written and admiring volume, is not a primitive throwback as researchers from the nineteenth century believed, but a fully evolved creature of surprising beauties and complexities.
This book is the story of a fascinating creature and those who studied it. Unfortunately, it was a letdown; the author's style is wordy and repetitive and the book is inflated with paragraphs and even chapters that could and should have been deleted. The entire story could have easily been told more concisely in the form of a magazine article. But then, the author wouldn't have had a book, would she? I am starting to think that these writers, who otherwise don't have much to say, stuff their manuscripts with minimally related material so as to have as many pages as they can. Do they get paid by the number of pages they write, or what?
My sister LOVES platypuses. So when I got her this for christmas one year, she couldn't put it down. Great Job on this. If you have a family member that loves an animal, books are definitely the way to go.
Well documented - a bit too short
this was a wonderfully put together book. i was expecting more of a layout for children, but my 12 year old ate this up!
I ordered this as a gift for some one who like platypuses (platipi?). I thought it would be a bit bigger, like a coffee table book. Still, it seems nice enough.
I enjoyed Platypus to no end as a well-written and well-researched introduction to the history of science's approach to this fascinating little critter and its place in the natural world. It is not, and doesn't try to be, a biological look as much as a view of how biology looked at a puzzling paradox. The prose is smooth and highly readable. The book introduces the reader via vivid thumbnails of some of the major scientific minds that tried to figure out just what this animal is and where it fits in the overall scheme of things. Along the way it dishes out platypus lore, legend and enough biology to satisfy and delight an interested layman, such as myself, and, likely, you, too.
My 14yo son love platypodes (the correct Greek plural ☺)
He's read this book cover to cover several times.