Work in Progress

Oliver Hochandel (Institució Milà i Fontanals - CSIC): “The riddle of the kangaroo birth. Generating knowledge about marsupials in and outside the zoo (1826-1926)” 

Abstract: Ever since Europeans sighted the first kangaroo in Australia, it posed riddles galore to naturalists. For example: were Marsupials real mammals? One question proved a particularly hard nut to crack and led to a century-long debate: how do kangaroos actually give birth? The advent of the zoo in the first half of the nineteenth century made it possible, at least in principle, to tackle the problem through observation. British naturalist Richard Owen enlisted the London zoo to devise a research program. He put forward the hypothesis that the mother put the tiny embryo into the pouch using her lips but could not observe it as such. Naturalists in other European zoos were eager to come up with definite observations such as Theodor Leisering (Berlin Zoo) and Ernst Pinkert, the owner of a private zoo in Leipzig.

In its first part this paper will analyze the reports published by European naturalists. In what way did they use the zoo as a resource? What was the epistemic value of observations as opposed to the classical anatomical approach (dissection)? What role did the animal keepers play who had been told to observe the pregnant kangaroo day and night?

In the second part this paper will contrast the European zoo-based investigations with the observations made by naturalists, hunters and farmers in Australia in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The riddle of the kangaroo birth had become a question much debated in the Australian public sphere, in particular in newspapers. In how far was this research conducted outside the zoo different to the European one? Finally, this paper will ask in what ways information about the reproduction of marsupials circulated between continents - or not. And how the riddle was solved in the end.

Oliver Hochadel (Bruchsal, Alemanya, 1968)Oliver Hochadel is a science historian and researcher at the Institució Milà i Fontanals (CSIC, Barcelona). The development of his academic career has taken him to Germany, Austria, Switzerland, the United States and Spain. His current research is focused on the relationship between science and its audiences. He has worked on electricity as public science in the German Enlightenment, the history of zoos in the 19th century, the history of research into human origins in the 20th century and the urban history of science around 1900. His publications include the monograph El mito de Atapuerca. Orígenes, ciencia, divulgación (2013), and the volumes Playing with Fire. Histories of the Lightning Rod (with Peter Heering and David Rhees, 2009), Barcelona: An Urban History of Science and Modernity, 1888-1929 (2016) and Urban Histories of Science, 1820-1940, which will be published in 2018 (both with Agustí Nieto-Galan).