Ever since it’s initial discovery in Eastern Australian in the late 18th century the bizarre platypus has been baffling people. Here is an animal that seems to have the body of beaver, a ducks beak, webbed feet, and and it lays eggs but nurses its young like other mammals. But wait there is more! The males have poison barbs on the backs of their feet with venom that is actually very similar to some snake venom. And it turns out that the strange leathery duck beak can emit subtle electromagnetic fields to help the animal navigate in murky water. Like I said bizarre. But the strange has just gotten stranger with the decoding of the platypus genome. It turns out that this strange animal, which is classified as a monotreme, has genetic similarities to reptiles, birds, and mammals. Not only in appearance is it a patchwork creature but in actual genetic make up too! Then there are the weird features like the fact that the platypus relies on ten chromosomes to determine the sex of an individual (in contrast humans only need two x and y). Quite literally this animal is probably one of the strangest living things on our planet. But it is important for science in that the new genetic studies are helping us understand the emergence and evolution of mammals. The platypus is on the very edge of the mammal definition. It is a solely unique creature.
read about the studies in National Geographic or the AP article appearing in Discovery News
also the official study as appearing in Nature is here platypus
