Platypuses are weird looking. They look like someone stitched together a duck and a beaver—flat bill, webbed feet, and a ...
The platypus is one of the most unique animals in the world. It’s a mammal, but it lays eggs. It has webbed feet, a beaver-like tail, and an otter-like snout and bill that helps it locate food ...
The platypus may be one of the strangest animals ever discovered. It lays eggs like a reptile, has venomous spurs, and a bill that can detect electrical signals in the water. Yet somehow, it’s still a ...
It’s a semi-aquatic exotic with some remarkable traits! This week, we’re exploring the strange but true story of the platypus. * Platypuses use “electrolocation” while feeding, sending out impulses ...
Outliers among mammals, monotremes lay eggs instead of giving birth to live young. Only two types of monotremes, the platypus and echidna, still exist, but more monotreme species were around about 100 ...
Jars of tiny platypus and echidna specimens, collected in the late 1800s by the scientist William Caldwell, have been discovered in the stores of Cambridge's University Museum of Zoology. Jars of tiny ...
The newly discovered Caldwell echidna specimen (photo by Jacqueline Garget; all images courtesy University of Cambridge Museum of Zoology) You know the type: rule-breaker, defies categorization, total ...
When British zoologist George Shaw first encountered a platypus specimen in 1799, he was so befuddled that he checked for stitches, thinking someone might be trying to trick him with a Frankencreature ...
If the platypus looks like a mixture of bird and mammal features, it's because it is. University of Sydney / Doug Gimesy Researchers recently published the most complete, detailed platypus genome ever ...