AIDEN MCNAMARA, REPORTER: They come out at as the sun goes down, ready to hunt. They use electrical impulses to find their prey. The males use sharp stingers on their back heels to deliver a venomous blow. And they have these adorable little bills and cute little webbed feet. Man, I love ’em. I just wish I could see one.<\/p>\n
Yeah, you’d be pretty lucky to spot one of these Aussie icons in the wild. They’re notoriously shy, spend most of their time alone, sleeping or eating \u2014 you and me both buddy. The platypus is one of only two mammals in the world that can lay eggs, known as monotremes. And they’re also notoriously weird looking. Sort of a combo between a duck and a beaver, which to some is pretty unbelievable.<\/p>\n
In fact, eighteenth century scientists saw a drawing of one and it thought it was a hoax. Of course, now we believe in platypi, platypee? Err\u2026plata\u2026 platypuses. Ah, that makes the most sense actually. In fact, we’re quite fond of them, so much so that they’ve been legally protected for more than a hundred years. Along with most of our native flora and fauna to be fair.<\/p>\n
This means you can’t harm, take, keep or sell them, unless you’ve got a license. But that’s not been enough to keep the platypus safe. Here in South Australia, platypus have been classed as endangered since the 1970s. In Victoria, they’ve been classed as vulnerable for the past five years.<\/p>\n
Which is not quite as bad as being endangered but it does mean their numbers are down. Obviously, that’s bad news, but it does mean platypuses in those states get extra protection. It’s one reason why in New South Wales there have been calls to change the protection status of the platypus.<\/p>\n
GILAD BINO, NSW PLATYPUS CONSERVATION INITIATIVE: We’re seeing significant declines in some areas.<\/p>\n
Gilad Bino is part of a team of researchers who say the platypus population in the state needs some help.<\/p>\n
GILAD BINO: They have been impacted by the significant droughts and fire that have impacted our country recently.<\/p>\n
On top of that, issues like land clearing, water pollution, and changes to how water flows have impacted our platypus friends for a while. He wants the platypus to be listed as a threatened species. But for that to happen, they’ll need more proof. You see, for a species to be listed as threatened, they have to show the population has declined 30 per cent or more over three generations. But as we’ve already established, these guys are hard to find and hard to count.<\/p>\n
GILAD BINO: Without good data, we’re just not keeping our finger on the pulse of this amazing animal.<\/p>\n
While researchers work hard on collecting the data, they’re asking the rest of us to help\u2026<\/p>\n
CITIZEN SCIENCE AIDEN: Oh, there’s one there!<\/p>\n
by keeping our eyes peeled for platypuses.<\/p>\n
CITIZEN SCIENCE AIDEN: Oh, it’s just a stick.<\/p>\n
If you do see one, they’re hoping you can let this group know where and when, and help keep this quirky little creature safe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"AIDEN MCNAMARA, REPORTER: They come out at as the sun goes down, ready to hunt. They use electrical…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":666210,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[64,63,128,338],"class_list":["post-666209","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/666209","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=666209"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/666209\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/666210"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=666209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=666209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=666209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}