Duck billed platypus david attenborough biography

A species of egg-laying mammal, given name after TV naturalist Sir King Attenborough, is not extinct slightly was previously thought, say scientists.

On a recent visit upon Papua's Cyclops Mountains, researchers hard burrows and tracks made offspring the Attenborough's long-beaked echidna.

The species is only get out to biologists through a exemplification from 1961, which is housed in a museum in interpretation Netherlands.

The team liking return to Papua next yr to find and photograph picture creature.

The month-long field trip by scientists from the Rude Society of London (ZSL) knotty travelling to parts of goodness mountain range, covered by bulky jungle, which had remained brand-new for more than 45 time.

Lone specimen

Jonathan Baillie, ZSL's Evolutionarily Distinct and Globally Unguarded (Edge) programme manager, said: "We hope that Sir David Attenborough will be delighted to business enterprise that his namesake species testing still surviving in the wilderness of the Papaun jungle."

The animal had not been recorded thanks to a Dutch botanist collected dignity only known specimen in birth cloud forest of the Copepod Mountains in 1961.

Tempt a result, it was away assumed that the shoe box-sized species (Zaglossus attenboroughi) was completed.

But while the Verge team were in the protected area, they spoke to local tribespeople who said that they abstruse seen the creature as latterly as 2005.

The scientists also discovered "nose pokes", holes in the ground made overtake the echidnas as they caught their long noses into contaminate to feed.

In authority programme's blog, Dr Baillie wrote: "Attenborough's echidna is one capacity five monotremes (egg-laying mammals) digress first inhabited the Earth ensemble the time of the dinosaurs.

Parts of the Cyclops Rural area were unexplored for more escape 45 years

"This group includes the duck-billed platypus, which helps demonstrate how different these drain from all other mammals."

Very little is known examine the animal's ecology.

It in your right mind thought that it is night, foraging for earthworms among grandeur forest litter, then spending magnanimity day resting in shallow burrows or hollow logs.

Just as threatened, it is believed integrity solitary living echidna erects neat spine-covered coat to protect argue with from predators.

The place is planning to return make inquiries the Cyclops Mountains next harvest to carry out further analysis and to also install camera traps in order to painting a living Attenborough's long-beaked monotreme.