Oh, hey, it's the coffee shop guy who is happy to heat up your muffin, Allie Ward, and though we can't all be in Australia right now, we are all here for platyposes.

What is with this ology, you ask me, horrified by the amount of letters?

Well, ornitho rinkus in Greek, that word, that portmanteau of words, means bird-like.

And the species we're going to be chatting about, anaton words, means bird-like. And the species we're going to be chatting

about, anatonous, means duck-like. So these critters names literally translate to bird-like

duck-like, although there was this outmoded species name paradoxus, which just means unexpected.

Platypus itself, that word, means means big flat feet. We're going to 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 Smologies, 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 D. Friend,

who wrote that Ologies is like the best comfort food and a warm hug combined.

Jordan D. Friend, I'm embracing some bread pudding in return. And on to this week's guests who got their PhD and biological sciences with a focus on impacts of river regulation on platyposed

population dynamics from Sydney's University of New South Wales, where they are now a joint

senior research associate, as well as at Taranga Conservation Society. They have nearly a decade

in monitoring wild platypus populations. They've worked nearly 500 wild ones, publishing numerous papers on

these animals, including field anesthesia for platypuses, a proven method, and the case for non-veterinarian

accreditation pathways in the journal Australian Memology. 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 ice breakers 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, fieldwork down under, platypuses and espionage, milk, eggs, hoaxes, and a lot of

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