The Origins of the Platypus

In 17 93, british royal navy officer john hunter wrote that the platypus had come to be thanks to a promiscuous intercourse between the different sexes of all these different animals. A lot of what europeans were arguing about and trying to prove in the nineteenth century was already commonly known among many aboriginal communities. Scientists simultaneously relied on aboriginal people to help them find platypus to study, and also disregarded their knowledge about their physiology. These hierarchical ideas also went on to form the basis of scientific racism when they were used to categorize groups of people from different parts of the world.