Owen had squeezed what he thought was the mammary gland of a preserved platypus and watched the holes where the glands opened onto the skin: The battle is played out in the documents available on BHL, and to my absolute delight, it led me to this line in one of Owen’s papers on platypus anatomy. Richard Owen was among those who was attempting to prove their milkiness. We now know they are, and they do.Ī defining feature of mammals is that they feed their young with milk, so those who argued that platypuses are mammals were searching for evidence of milk-producing mammary glands even though platypuses lack nipples. One of the many arguments in contention was whether or not they are mammals, another was whether or not they lays eggs. The introduction of the species to scientific circles in Europe sparked a decades-long debate over where it fitted on the tree of life and what characteristics mammals could possess. I’ve been utterly reliant on the incredible collection of works on BHL to tell the story of the importance of platypus representations on the history of taxonomy. I am currently writing a new book on the echidnas’ relative, the platypus. Contributed in BHL from Smithsonian Libraries. Lydekker, Richard, A hand-book to the marsupialia and monotremata. Plate XXXVIII, an echidna with forward-facing feet. The eyes are very small, and black, with a pale-blue iris.” The nostrils are small, and seated near the extremity of the snout. “The snout is long and tubular, and perfectly resembles in structure that of the Myrmecophaga jubata, or great ant-eater having only a very small opening or rictus at the tip, from whence is protruded a long lumbriciform tongue, as in the ant-eaters. Amongst an otherwise perfectly reasonable description of the species (which he considered to provide a link between actual porcupines in the genus Hystrix and actual ant-eaters in the genus Myrmecophaga), Shaw includes this line: In 1792 George Shaw (who would also publish the first scientific description of the platypus seven year later) included “The Porcupine Ant-Eater” in The Naturalist’s Miscellany. That mystery echidna popped back into my mind recently when re-reading the original species description on the Biodiversity Heritage Library, and I think I know the answer. Why does this taxidermy echidna at Manchester Museum have blue eyes? Photo Credit: Jack Ashby. I’ve come across tens of wrong-footed echidnas, and I know the reason why, but I was flummoxed a few years ago when I encountered an echidna with blue eyes at the Manchester Museum. In the case of the echidna, it is extremely common for the back feet to point in the wrong direction - in life they should point backwards (enabling echidnas to scratch in between their spines and dig vertically downwards to bury themselves in defense), but taxidermists often didn’t know that, so twisted their feet around. This means that their poses are often incorrect. The trouble is that throughout history, the person doing the taxidermy - particularly for specimens that had travelled to Europe from Australia - had often never seen the living animal. Taxidermy is intended to make visitors forget the animal is dead, and to achieve that a flat animal skin has to be rebuilt into the shape of a living animal. While museum specimens are in one sense a primary source, they are also modified by people in order to make them presentable to the public. This has made the topic of how animals are depicted - in writings, illustrations and museums - a real focus for me.Ī live (undoctored) echidna, in Tasmania. However, we wouldn’t be able to confirm exactly how these things are put to use without seeing them alive.Īs someone with one foot in the world of Australian mammal ecology (the living) and another in natural history museums (the dead), one thing that really interests me is the cross-over: how do the dead represent the living? Museums are sites of communication - they provide windows onto the natural world for people to engage with animals they may never see alive. The impenetrable coat of thick spines is clearly for defense against predators and guessing at an ant-eating lifestyle doesn’t require too much imagination when you think about what its narrow toothless snout and stout, digging claws might be for. Examining echidna specimens in museums helps us to understand their evolutionary relationships and enables us to come up with some reasonable suggestions for how they live their lives. Photo Credit: University of CambridgeĬonsider the echidna, for example. Taxidermy short-beaked echidna ( Tachyglossus aculeatus) from the University Museum of Zoology, Cambridge.
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