We must save these wonderful weirdos before it’s too late
A beautiful baby. Photo: The Sydney Morning Herald/Fairfax Media via Getty Images The ecological devastation wrought by the Australian bushfires is impossible to overstate: The sprawling blazes have grown large enough to make their own apocalyptic weather , they have wiped out species scientists hadn’t even discovered yet, and in addition to displacing hundreds of thousands of people , they have likely obliterated more than 1 billion animals.
Chief among them: the platypus, a specific-to-Australia wonder that, according to a new study from researchers at the University of New South Wales Sydney Centre for Ecosystem Science, may now be on track toward extinction due to long-term drought. Help! . I don’t know how familiar you are with the platypus, but truly, it is an astounding creature. It looks like what you’d get if you crossed a beaver with a duck, something you obviously can’t do, but still: Note its sleek brown body, its slappy paddle tail juxtaposed with the bill and webbed feet previously relegated to water fowl. This beautiful mutant is a “secretive and nocturnal” aquatic mammal, one of only two egg-laying mammal species.
Platypuses live in and around water, meaning recent climate events have hit them hard. Australia’s bushfires ignited toward the end of the hottest and driest year the country has yet seen, the drought drying up rivers and stranding platypuses. According to the study, the platypus already faces a “potentially devastating combination of threats, including water-resource development, land clearing, climate change, and increasingly severe periods of drought.
“Even for a presumed ‘safe’ species such as the platypus, mitigating or even stopping threats, such as new dams, is likely to be more effective than waiting for the risk of extinction to increase and possible failure,” study co-author, Professor Brendan Wintle of the University of Melbourne, said in a news release. “We should learn from the peril facing the koala to understand what happens when we ignore the warning signs.
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