Meet a scientist

JACK ASHBY

ASSISTANT DIRECTOR OF THE UNIVERSITY MUSEUM OF ZOOLOGY, CAMBRIDGE, AUTHOR OF PLATYPUS MATTERS: THE EXTRAORDINARY STORY OF AUSTRALIAN MAMMALS.

What got you interested in Australian mammals?

Australia and New

Guinea are the only places in the world where you can find all three major groups of mammals: the egglaying monotremes, marsupials and placentals. My fascination with Australian mammals started with the platypus – an egg-laying mammal that uses its bill to detect the electricity given off by its prey’s heartbeats, and can produce venom in its ankles (if they are male) – what’s not to love?

What’s the most surprising thing you’ve encountered while doing fieldwork?

I’m always amazed by the size of the babies that marsupials can fit in their pouches. Quolls – which are beautifully spotted relatives of Tasmanian devils, with short legs and long bodies – have to run on their tip-toes to stop their babies dragging on the ground when they run. Quolls can have up to eight young. Even so, their babies still clamber into the stretchy pouch – even when the joey’s legs and tail stick out because they’re so big.

How does research on living animals fit in with the work on museums?

Fieldwork helps us understand how animals live their lives, and how they interact with their environments. But museums contain the world’s best evidence of life on Earth over the last 200 years, which is invaluable for understanding how it’s changed. Specimen records show how ranges and habitats have changed over time, which is important for the science of climate change. More mammal species have gone extinct over the last 200 years in Australia than anywhere else in the world, and natural history museums are the last remaining habitat for those extinct species.

A wombat.