In 1943, Australian Attorney-General Doc Evatt sent UK Prime Minister Winston Churchill... a platypus. 

Why? For diplomacy, of course!

When it inevitably perished two days before arriving in Liverpool, our guest, in the Journal of Environment and History, wrote “Winston’s death cannot have come as a terrible surprise: he was travelling in the middle of the war, constantly under threat by German U-boats.5 He was also a platypus.”.

GUEST: Dr Harrison Croft, recently awarded a PHD from Monash University.