PlatypusWhen the first specimen of a platypus arrived in England in 1799, it was greeted with astonishment and disbelief. What was this strange creature from the new colony of Australia? It defied rational explanation, with its webbed feet and duck's beak attached to what seemed to be a mammal's bodysurely it was a hoax on the part of those cheeky new colonials? As eighteenth century naturalists struggled to classify the platypus, the little animal excited