Australia: Scientists push to list platypus as threatened
November 23, 2020
Numbers of the vulnerable duck-billed species, unique to Australia, have dropped by more than a fifth since 1990. Extreme droughts linked to climate change threaten the platypus' existence, scientists have warned.
Scientists have called for the Australian native platypus to be listed as a "threatened species" after a report found the habitat of the semi-aquatic duck-billed mammal had shrunk by up to 22% over the past 30 years.
Researchers from the University of New South Wales (UNSW) said severe drought brought by climate change, land clearing for farming and dam building are to blame.
"The platypus continues to face ongoing threats across its range. Unsustainable water extraction and land clearing will continue to put pressure on freshwater ecosystems and drive future declines in the future," lead author Gilad Bino said Monday, adding that increased severity and occurrence of bush fires is also likely to have contributed to the platypus's decline.
Mouths, snouts and beaks: The most bizzare mouths in the animal world
Long and pointy, wide and oddly-shaped, and sometimes monstrously large — the animal kingdom has some seriously impressive mouths. Here are some of the most fascinating.
Image: picture-alliance/blickwinkel/fotototo
Long and pointy
The sword-billed hummingbird’s beak is longer than its body. It has the longest beak of all known hummingbird species. And it needs it! One of the bird's main sources of food is nectar, which it drinks from very long, slender hanging flower crowns. With its beak wide open, it can also catch insects.
Image: picture-alliance/WILDLIFE/P.Oxford
Gobble, gobble, gobble
Two star-like shapes on its snout make the star-nosed mole a very well-equipped hunter. The appendages around its nostrils — a total of 22 fleshy tentacles — are sensory organs. With these it can examine 13 potential prey animals per second. We can't even look that fast!
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/K. Catania
Neither duck nor beaver — what are you?
An egg-laying mammal with a beaver‘s tail and a duck‘s beak. What sounds like a fantasy creature actually exists — in Australia. The platypus boasts a large, flexible beak with a leather-like surface. A built-in snorkel is also included: its nostrils are on top. This allows the animal to dive underwater and breathe at the same time.
Don't worry, as scary as it may appear, this vampire is vegetarian. The tufted deer prefers to graze at dusk. If it senses danger, it does something unusual: it barks. Deer do this to warn each other. While fleeing, they erect their white tail — an escape-signal among tufted deer.
Image: picture-alliance/blickwinkel/W. Layer
More beak than bird?
This bird may look like a character from a comic, but the shoebill actually walks among us — in the swamps of central tropical Africa. It often stands motionless in the water and looks downward. When it detects prey, it strikes at lightning speed. With the hook at the top of its beak, it grabs its prey. Even large lungfishes are swallowed up whole.
Image: picture-alliance/imageBROKER
That's one big mouth you've got
With a body length of up to 10 meters, the basking shark is the second-largest fish in the world, after the whale shark. Despite its monstrous size, it's anything but bloodthirsty; basking sharks eat just one thing: plankton. They swim with their mouths wide open to catch and filter food. Water that enters its mouth with the plankton is filtered out through its gills — 1800 tons of water per hour.
Image: gemeinfrei
A bit less ferocious than its big brother
Gavials live in Southeast Asia. In contrast to the crocodile, gavials don't eat zebras or deer, but fish. Its snout is therefore long, narrow and home to very many teeth. Perfect for catching fish!
Image: Josh More
Turbo-charging through a sea of flowers
The sucking trunk of the hummingbird hawk-moth is not only very long, it's also extremely precise. The butterfly can suck nectar from up to 100 flowers per minute. While doing so, the moth hovers in front of the flower. With its long trunk, the hummingbird hawk-moth can also reach the nectar of flowers with particularly long calyxes — out of reach for others.
Image: FARS
Just a spoonful
The spoonbill is equipped with the perfect tool. No matter fish, frog or other water-dweller, nothing escapes this beak. In searching for food. the spoonbill usually goes into shallow water. However, sometimes it also wanders the coast. In the mud flats, it swings its head back and forth, filtering food from the shallow water.
Image: picture-alliance/blickwinkel/B. Zoller
Lawn mower at the bottom of the sea
Dugongs feed on seaweed. They prefer the part of the plants that lay underground. And they have developed a special technique for this: this manatee can dig. It digs out the plant with its upper lip, then the roots are pulled out of the ground. It shakes off the dirt and then sucks the plant into its mouth.
The beaver-tailed, webbed-feet platypus live mostly across Australia's eastern coast, close to rivers and streams. They cannot live outside water. As Australia dries further, their habitat could get even smaller, the scientists warned.
Richard Kingsford, director of UNSW's Centre for Ecosystem Science, said that platypus populations "will disappear from some of our rivers without returning, if rivers keep degrading with droughts and dams."
Currently, the platypus is listed as "near threatened" by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, but it is not listed as threatened under Australia's Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act.
Changing its listing would prioritize its monitoring and "also mean an increased focus on what we can do to improve the situation," Kingsford said.
