The very peculiar platypus (image: Dave Watts)

Life for the duck-billed platypus has never seemed easy.

With its bizarre bird-like beak, mammalian fur and reptilian gait and egg-laying habits, the platypus long mystified natural historians, who were unsure of its origin, or place in the world.

When the first platypus was shipped to the UK from Australia, people thought it was a joke and that someone had sewn a duck's bill to a mammal's body, so the story goes, while the animal has in the past been hunted by European settlers on the Australian continent for its fur.

Now it seems life may be about to get a little harder for this strange-looking monotreme.

New research suggests that climate change, specifically the warming of the Australian continent, may have a previously unrecognised damaging impact on the platypus.

In short, the platypus likes the cool waters of the rivers and streams in which it lives. And as temperatures rise, life in these waters may literally get too hot to handle.