Platypus lay eggs or not1/8/2024 For instance, with its legs splayed out to the side, it even walks like a lizard, and not like any other mammal - even echidnas. So we are, perhaps, entitled to ask " why is it a mammal?" It's not as if the egg-laying is the only thing that's strange about it. Mind you, that is it - just five living species out of a total of over 5,700 kinds of mammal. It isn't even the only one, because the four species of echidna also lay eggs. Yet the platypus is, indeed, an egg-laying mammal. Indeed, I've seen a rant online where somebody complained that you can't trust Wikipedia, because it claims that platypuses are mammals when they "obviously can't be" because they wouldn't lay eggs if they did. No, the kicker is surely the fact that platypuses lay eggs. And, when you think about it, the bill is really no stranger than, say, an elephant's trunk. There are other, equally odd, adaptations among mammals - an armadillo is kind of scaly, but most people probably don't think they're reptiles. It's actually there to house special sense organs that detect tiny electric currents in the water that give away the presence of the shrimps, worms, and so on that it eats.īut, odd though the bill is, I doubt it's the main reason people think platypuses might not be mammals. It's rubbery, rather than horny, and has an internal bone structure supporting it. In fact, the platypus's beak is quite different from that of a bird. True, we call the snouts of dolphins and certain kinds of whale a "beak", but that's clearly not what we're talking about. The scientific name even means "duck-like bird-beak" in Latin. The platypus ( Ornithorhynchus anatinus) is the only mammal to have anything that looks like a beak. There is no other mammal that looks at all like a platypus.įor a start, there's the beak. This, I dare say, is why most people I asked were so uncertain. There's no such word as "platypi" - unlike "hippopotami", it's flat out wrong). (Incidentally, before anyone asks - yes "platypuses". If a porpoise can be its own kind of thing, without being a dolphin, then why can't a platypus also be its own kind of thing - albeit at a higher level of strangeness?Īnd platypuses are, undeniably, pretty strange. It's all very well for me to say "what else could it be?" because, if I'm honest, I spend a lot of time on this blog pointing out that porpoises aren't dolphins, rabbits aren't rodents, musk deer aren't deer, and so on. Only one was confident of the correct answer. (I had one response of "definitely not, because they're marsupials", an answer that's wrong on so many levels I'll ignore it from here on in). Yet why should I be? When I conducted a very brief straw poll at work this week, I discovered that most people I spoke to weren't sure, with all but one of those saying "probably not". I've been asked this question a couple of times recently, and I was somewhat surprised on both occasions. Oh, you wanted more than that? Well, let's see what I can do.
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