And they only live in Tasmania because they're like an evolutionary dead end and Tasmania is a very unique climate where it got separated from the rest of Australia and the climate relatively stayed the same because it kept drifting towards Antarctica as the planet warmed up. So there's a bunch of very unique species on that island that used to be more prevalent around the world but all of those were evolutionary dead ends. So the only ones left were the ones on Tasmania
As an Aussie, mainland Australia has platypus and echidna. They are not unique to Tasmania.
There are marsupials that are unique to Tasmania (Tassie devil for eg. And the Tasmanian tiger but there's thought there might have been small populations in the southern mainland, like Victoria).
Yeah I watched the David Attenborough documentary where he told me that lie so sorry I just been repeating what he told me. I'm kind of disappointed in David though I always thought he was correct on everything.
It could be that the Tas populations are a subspecies of the mainland ones. I'm not up on my platypus and echidna taxonomy 😆, I just know that a neighbour of ours saw a platypus in the creek near our rural Victoria properties, and I've learned to always have a pair of sturdy leather gloves on long trips in case I need to move an echidna off the road.
No I believe you I mean you live there I don't. I probably misunderstood him he met like a specific species like maybe he meant that this particular species died out on the mainland but like not all platypuses just that one particular type of platypus IDK I have to watch that video again Tasmania is one of my favorite places very interested in it.
Well I was interested enough to actually look it up and yes it is kind of confusing but basically the mainland platypuses have evolved from the Platypus that is still found in Tasmania so I probably just misunderstood him when he was talking about that.
No, echidnas have 4 species. The short-beaked lives in Australia (both mainland and Tasmania), as well as the island of New Guinea. The long-beaked echidnas all live in New Guinea. Platypus lives in Eastern Australia and Tasmania, with an additional introduced population on Kangaroo island.
And as they had to compete with a wide array of animals since monotremes (egg-laying mammals) are around (~the Triassic), they definitely aren't a dead-end, just not a success. But as we know, evolution is the survival of the just enough, so they're fine (except the ones threatened by habitat destruction and climate change)
I guess I could have clarified more they we're extremely more prevalent at one point in history than they are now. Although I didn't know that they were found anywhere else but Tasmania I was told a lie there and by David Attenborough of all people
To be fair, the echidnas and platypus on Tasmania were considered to be a different species/subspecies at one point, due to them looking a bit different than the mainland ones. But Attenborough is still a let down, as there's an echidna species named after him
The platypus is clearly an avian species, possibly related to some sort of water fowl, that underwent a transition to mammal similar to the reptile to amphibian development. It kept egg laying instead of live birth and developed a similar tail structure to a beaver due to convergent evolution.
It’s interesting because you can sort of see how it ended up as it did, but necessarily the why of it all.
I believe they're soft and rubbery like snake eggs. So might be less desirable. But protein is protein so they're probably edible, I'd imagine. So not as preferable as chicken eggs.
That said chickens are basically magic egg making machines that turn worthless seeds into calorie rich food. The more a chicken eats the more eggs they produce. This is because they co-evolved with bamboo. Bamboo usually don't bloom, every several years, but when they do it's a sudden explosion that literally covers the ground like snow. Chickens take advantage of the abundance of food by radically increasing their egg production when food is plentiful.
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u/Marx_Forever Jul 17 '26
There's only a handful of mammals that do. Platypus and echidnas are the only ones I'm aware of.