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When British scientists first examined a platypus in 1799, they suspected a hoax: zoologist George Shaw even cut into the skin, looking for stitches holding on the duck's bill. It lives only in the rivers and lakes of eastern Australia.
📍 Indian subcontinent (India & Sri Lanka)
Peafowl come from the Indian subcontinent, and the peacock is India's national bird. His dazzling 'tail' is really a train of extra-long feathers that grow over the short real tail, and their shimmer comes from tiny structures, not pigment.
📍 Mainland Southeast Asia
Chickens descend mainly from the red junglefowl of Southeast Asia. The oldest known chicken bones, roughly 3,500 years old, come from Ban Non Wat in northeast Thailand, where wild birds were likely drawn to farmers' rice fields.
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📍 Iberian Peninsula
Merino sheep were developed in medieval Spain, which guarded the fine-wool breed as a monopoly: smuggling one out could mean death. Merinos only reached Australia in 1797, via South Africa.
📍 Queensland–New South Wales border, Australia
Cut a finger lime open and out spill tiny juicy pearls that chefs call 'lime caviar'. This wild citrus grows in the coastal rainforests between Brisbane and the Clarence River in eastern Australia, in colours from green to pink and red.
📍 Southeast Queensland & northern NSW, Australia
Macadamias are native to eastern Australia, the only widely grown food plant native to that continent. Seeds reached Hawaii in the 1880s, and Hawaii led world production for decades until Australia overtook it in 1997.
📍 Honolulu, Hawaii
Madeiran craftsmen who sailed to Hawaii in 1879 turned their little machete guitar into the ukulele in the 1880s, and King Kalākaua made it a royal favourite. The Hawaiian name roughly means 'jumping flea'.