typhlonectes:

A more bizarre mammal you will not find.

And yet, for all the curiosity surrounding these chimerical creatures, which have been swimming eastern Australia’s rivers for tens of millions of years, scientists have no idea how many duck-billed platypuses are out there, how many there used to be, or how long they might continue to be at all.

“Are there half as many as there were? A tenth of what there were?” asks Josh Griffiths, a wildlife ecologist with the Centre for Environmental Stress and Adaptation Research in Victoria, Australia. “I mean, they could have increased for all we know.” Even so, the International Union for Conservation of Nature decided in 2016 to classify the species as near threatened due to challenges such as habitat loss and degradation…