Ornithorhynchology (PLATYPUSES) with Tahneal Hawke

Oh, hey. It's the coffee shop guy who is happy to heat up your muffin, Ally Ward. And though we can't all be in Australia right now, we are all here for platypuses. What is with this ology? You ask me horrified by the amount of letters. Well, ornitho rynchus in Greek, those that word, that portmanteau of words means bird like. And the species we're gonna be chatting about, Anadonus, means duck like. So these critters names literally translate to bird like duck like. Although there was this outmoded species named Paradoxus, which just means unexpected. Platypus itself, that word means big flat feet. We're gonna talk about those two, as well as this other just constellation of confusions that is the platypus. But first, thank you so much to patrons of the show who make it happen by joining for as little as a dollar a month. Thank you to everyone checking out Smallogy's, our shorter kid friendly episodes. You can subscribe to wherever you get podcasts. Those are linked in the show notes. Thanks to everyone finding each other in the wild in your Ologies merch from ologiesmerch.com. And thanks as always to people who review the show. I read them all. They help so much to prove it. Here's a wet one from Jordan Difriend who wrote that, Ologies is like the best comfort food and a warm hug combined. Jordan Dfriend, I'm embracing some bread pudding in return. And on to this week's guests who got their PhD in biological sciences with a focus on impacts of river regulation on platypus population dynamics from Sydney's University of New South Wales, where they are now a joint senior research associate, as well as at Taronga Conservation Society. They have nearly a decade in monitoring wild platypus populations. They've worked with nearly 500 wild ones, publishing numerous papers on these animals, including field anesthesia for platypuses, a proven method in the case for non veterinarian accreditation pathways in the journal Australian Mammalogy. They let me ask so many befuddled questions on mine and your behalf. So say goodbye to small talk about the weather forever because this single episode of Ologies will give you icebreakers for the rest of your life as we touch on their fur, their face, their butts, their tails, their evolution, their conservation, how to spot a platypus, why you shouldn't have one in your bathtub, field work down under, platypuses and espionage, milk, eggs, hoaxes, and a lot of soft stunned gasps with biologist, conservationist, scholar, professor, and ornithorhynchologist, doctor Tanille Hawke. It's Neil Hawke. My pronouns are sheher. Okay. First things first. Platypuses, platypi, what's the deal? So platypuses, technically platypodes, but that's not really widely used. The reason is because it's actually Greek origin. So if it was Latin origin, it would be platypi. But because it's Greek origin, we go we generally go with platypuses. Okay. That makes sense. And it solves the most burning question in a lot …