When European scientists first set eyes on the platypus, in the form of a pelt and a sketch shipped over from Australia in 1798, they couldn't believe it.
The specimen was so bizarre that English zoologist George Shaw said it was impossible not to question its authenticity.
Had a prankster sewn the beak of a duck onto the body of a beaver? To make sure, he examined the specimen thoroughly to check for any stitches.
With no seam in sight, Shaw became the first to formally describe the animal. He dubbed it Platypus anatinus, aka ‘duck-like flat-foot,’ but in time this was refined to Ornithorhynchus anatinus, aka ‘duck-like bird-snout.’
The platypus looks as though someone took one of those children’s books where hinged sections depict the head, middle and bottom of different animals, and gave it a shuffle.
Seemingly, it has the bill of a duck, the body of an otter and the tail of a beaver. To muddy the taxonomical waters further, it famously lays eggs like a bird yet feeds milk to its young like a mammal.
After many years of study and heated debate, the platypus was eventually classified as a primitive type of mammal called a monotreme.
In Greek, the word ‘monotreme’ means ‘single opening,’ referring to the multi-purpose hole or ‘cloaca’ in the animal’s rear that serves as a conduit for waste, reproductive juices and fertilised eggs.
Alongside four species of echidna, the platypus is one of five living monotreme species, all of which lay eggs instead of giving birth to live young.
In the case of the platypus, the female lays two small, leathery eggs in a grass-lined breeding burrow. Ten days later, the ‘platypups’ or ‘puggles’ hatch.
The size of a butter bean, they’re blind, hairless and, without their mum, utterly hopeless.
Over the next four months, she feeds them with a thick, nutrient-dense milk, which she secretes through specialised pores on her teat-less abdomen and they lick from her fur.
The weirdness doesn’t stop there, though. The bill of the platypus is jam-packed with receptor cells that can sense touch, pressure and the electrical signals produced by the movement of its prey, which includes crustaceans and insect larvae.
Unusually for a mammal, the platypus is also venomous. Males have a pair of hollow spurs on their hind feet, which they use to inject venom into other males when competing for female attention.
They swim strangely, too. Unlike otters, which use front and hind limbs to propel themselves underwater, and beavers, which use their hind limbs and tail, the platypus pushes itself through the water by paddling with its front paws only.
The tail and webbed hind feet are used for steering.
And if that’s not enough weirdness for you, zoom in on the platypus genome.
Instead of the standard two sex chromosomes that most mammals have, the platypus has ten, not to mention some genes that are mammalian, some that are reptilian, and others that are utterly unique.
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