Climate Change Poses Danger To Platypus: Study

But its thick, watertight fur coat — one of the key tools to ensuring its survival in the cool depths of rivers and waterholes — could spell disaster in a warming climate, according to a new study from Melbourne's Monash University.

Using weather and platypus habitat data stretching back more than 100 years, researchers were able to map declines in particular populations in connection with droughts and heat events.

The team then extrapolated their findings across a range of climate change scenarios laid out by the government's science research agency, CSIRO, to model how global warming would affect the unusual native species. Read the full report here.

Source: by Amy Coopes, The China Post, Sydney.