Platypus
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- ¥1,200
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- ¥1,200
発行者による作品情報
'In this remote part of the earth, Nature (having made horses, oxen, ducks, geese, oaks, elms, and all regular productions for the rest of the world) seems determined to have a bit of a play, and to amuse herself as she pleases.' - Rev Sydney Smith, Sydney, 1819.
When the first specimen of a platypus arrived in England in 1799 it was greeted with astonishment and disbelief. What was this strange creature from the new colony of Australia? It defied rational explanation, with its webbed feet and duck's beak attached to what seemed to be a mammal's body - surely it was a hoax on the part of those cheeky new colonials?
As eighteenth century naturalists struggled to classify the platypus, the little animal excited curiosity and sparked fierce debate in international scientific circles, drawing in leaders of zoology and comparative anatomy in Britain and Europe. This is the enigmatic story of a biological riddle that confounded scientists for nearly ninety years, challenging theories of creationism, evolution and the classification of species along the way.
Secretive, elusive and beguiling, the platypus has continued to captivate public and scientific attention to the present day.
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.
