![]() ![]() These pads are replaced continuously throughout its lifetime. They (and their relatives the echidnas) don’t have teeth, but instead grind their food between mouth pads made of keratin. Platypuses stow their prey in cheek pouches, and swim to the surface to eat. Moving its head back and forth, it can find prey nearby and swiftly move in for the kill. ![]() Additionally, about 40,000 electroreceptors help them find the direction and distance of prey (its eyes and ears are closed while it’s underwater) by detecting electrical impulses generated by living creatures. This strange-looking snout is laden with “pushrods” that respond to stimuli like touch, pressure, sound waves, and motion. It is dark colored, nearly black in contrast to its chocolate-colored coat. Its signature “duck bill” is actually soft and pliable, not hard like a duck’s bill at all. Its rear feet serve as rudders and brakes. Its plump tail serves as a stabilizer during swimming and stores extra fat for energy. While lumbering somewhat awkwardly on land to protect the webbing on its feet, they are sleek missiles in the water. Those big webbed feet help propel them through the water, and the claws make digging burrows a breeze. Mostly brown on its body, there’s a flash of white fur beneath its eyes, and its belly is lighter in color, too. Long guard hairs protect the dense fur underneath, which stays dry even after a platypus has been in the water for hours. Platypus fur is waterproof and traps an insulating layer of air to keep its body temperature stable, even in cold water. Their dense fur makes fine insulation, both in the water and out. While their range is just one small area of the world, they weather many climate extremes (and fresh water sources) from toasty plateaus and rainforests, to the chilly mountainous regions of Tasmania and the Australian Alps. At a glance, it looks like a hodgepodge of animal pieces stitched together: a paddle-shaped tail from an otter, a sleek body covered in dense, chestnut-colored fur like a mole, a wide, flat duck-like bill attached in front of its little round eyes, and big webbed feet like a pelican.Īll these characteristics come in handy for its freshwater lifestyle-that bizarre looking bill is laden with thousands of receptors that help a platypusl navigate the murky depths and detect tiny movements of potential food like shellfish or insects. (A detailed explanation of electroreception can be found in What is electroreception and how do sharks use it?īut the surprises in this anatomical funhouse don't stop there since we have yet to discover a reptilian connection that has something to do with platypus poison.The platypus is as fascinating on the inside as it is on the outside! Among Australia’s most iconic wildlife, this semi-aquatic, egg-laying species is also one of the few venomous mammals. This "sense," termed electroreception, is the same method sharks use to hunt. That electricity exists in the form of muscle movements and sometimes from water rushing over stationary objects. These pores open up into sensitive nerve endings that can detect changes in the electrical current in the water. It turns out that tiny pores called electroreceptors dot the platypus bill. Because it closes its eyes and seals off its nostrils upon submersion, scientists wondered how it manages to hunt without the help of sight or smell. You see, the platypus lives in and around rivers and feeds off of insects, larvae, shellfish and worms, which it locates underwater. The platypus even shares a special sensory capability with the shark. Also like birds, platypuses have only one orifice for excretion and birth, which is why they're called monotremes, along with echidnas. They also have webbed feet and bills like birds and lay eggs like reptiles. The female platypus doesn't nurse with nipples instead, she secretes milk into her abdominal skin that the babies, called puggles, suckle on. But that's where the mammalian similarities stop. It's common knowledge that the platypus is a definite oddball in the animal kingdom, but what characteristics really puzzle scientists? Because the platypus has fur and the female nurses its young, the animal is classified as a mammal. In fact, experts in England laughed off the first specimen brought over from its native Australia, believing it was a poorly constructed hoax, like the Bigfoot creature that two supposedly found in north Georgia in the summer of 2008. One adjective that's likely never been applied to the mammal is "normal" - after all, its physiology and anatomy borrow from birds, reptiles and mammals in a baffling conglomeration of webbed feet and a duck bill, the ability to lay eggs (familiar to both birds and reptiles) and a furry body. The duckbill platypus has been called a lot of things since it arrived on the zoological scene in 1798. ![]()
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