{"id":13988,"date":"2022-06-07T05:00:57","date_gmt":"2022-06-07T03:00:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sciencefocus.com\/?p=121078"},"modified":"2022-06-07T05:19:14","modified_gmt":"2022-06-07T03:19:14","slug":"5-of-the-best-books-about-mammals","status":"publish","type":"rss_feed","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/rss_feed\/5-of-the-best-books-about-mammals\/","title":{"rendered":"5 of the best books about mammals"},"content":{"rendered":"

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By Jack Ashby\n \t\t<\/p>

Published: Tuesday, 07 June 2022 at 12:00 am<\/p>

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Australia is home to some truly iconic mammals<\/a>, capable of astonishing evolutionary feats. I\u2019ve spent the last 20 years trying to get to know them better, through ecological fieldwork across Australia\u2019s diverse habitats, and a career working with specimens in zoology museums (as well as reading everything I can about them), and I wrote my new book, Platypus Matters: The Extraordinary Story of Australian Mammals<\/em>\u00a0with the aim of celebrating their lives, their roles in recent history, and their place in the world today.<\/p>\n

Their natural history can be surprising. Platypuses, for example, are one of a tiny number of mammals that can detect electricity: with their ears, eyes and nostrils closed, they sense the underwater world through the electrical impulses given off by the nerve signals controlling their prey\u2019s muscles \u2013 including their heartbeats.<\/p>\n

They are also one of the world\u2019s only venomous mammals. The males have large ankle-spurs attached to venom glands, which are used in fights over females during the breeding season, and as such are the only known animals to be seasonally venomous. And being mammals, they produce milk\u2026 but they have no nipples.<\/p>\n

Among the marsupials, wombats are one-of-a-kind. Their teeth never stop growing, they poo cubes<\/a>, and they defend themselves with reinforced rears.<\/p>\n

And in one species of wallaby, the females are never not simultaneously lactating and pregnant \u2013 with a differently aged embryo in each of their two wombs, and two differently aged babies suckling milk, one small one inside the pouch and one large one sticking its head in from the outside. Another kind of wallaby can replace its teeth continuously, like sharks.<\/p>\n

Then there are antechinuses \u2013 minute carnivorous marsupials whose males don\u2019t see their first birthday, as their frenzied sex lives take so much energy that their immune systems fail. This is all to the benefit of antechinus females, who are then left in a world with no adult males with which to compete for food.<\/p>\n

As well as telling their stories, in Platypus Matters<\/em> I explore how the wider world came to know these creatures, and what that means for their conservation. When they were first introduced to western scientists, the biology of platypuses and their fellow egg-laying mammals, echidnas, became a touchstone for the battle around evolution<\/a> \u2013 they were quite unlike anything anyone in Europe had seen before.<\/p>\n

Early colonial reports of Australian mammals are rife with descriptions that paint a poor picture of these incredible species, and those narratives continue to impact the world\u2019s relationship with them today, and with Australia as a whole.<\/p>\n

Those accounts were characterised by a stubborn insistence that platypuses, echidnas and marsupials are somehow more primitive than the mammals of Europe and the Americas. This reputation haunts me, and so in my book, I describe the often-misunderstood mammals of Australia in all their glory, and why it matters how we talk about them.<\/p>\n

Read more about mammals:<\/strong><\/p>\n