Footprints in the Water72

With the bill and webbed feet of a duck, broad flat tail of a beaver, and a furry body that closely resembles that of a mole, the platypus is so bizarre that British scientists first thought it was a hoax - stitched together by fraudsters. It is one of only a few mammals that produce venom, and - together with echidnas - it forms a unique branch of egg-laying mammals called monotremes.

Despite what we know about the biological quirks of platypuses, they are so elusive and difficult to track down that we still don't have a solid grasp of their abundance or distribution. However, that is beginning to change.

Doug Gimesy's exceptionally rare images reveal how citizen science and environmental DNA analysis are opening up new worlds of information about one of our planet’s most unique (and baffling) species.

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