Scientists Once Thought Platypuses Were Fake
Featured in Ripley's Believe It or Not!
Pretty much everyone knows platypuses are weird. They have tails like a beaver’s, they lay eggs like a reptile, and they have bills like a duck’s. Though this basic platypus knowledge is part of most elementary school animal and science lessons, the truth is platypuses are WAY weirder than most of us even realize. So weird, in fact, that the first western scientists who inspected them believed them to be a hoax.
Zoologist George Shaw was the first westerner to describe a platypus, the pelt and bill of which he was sent in 1799 from Australia. Shaw tried to understand the platypus but, like many of those who studied the strange mammal after him, couldn’t shake the feeling he was being duped.