My “everything in Australia can end your life” schtick might be getting tiring. But an Australian-grade evolutionary arms race to survive has created an animal kingdom so beyond belief that when people first saw this creature, they thought it the work of a taxidermist who was spitting in God’s face.
Today’s Moment of Science… the custard maker.
The first time a European saw a preserved platypus around the turn of the nineteenth century, they basically looked at it and said “fuck you, no.” It looked like someone played a practical joke on you with a duck bill attached to the face of whatever in God’s name this was. I’ve seen it referred to as a ‘duck-beaver hybrid,’ which is visually accurate but evolutionarily not. To figure out what the platypus is, you’ve gotta go back several branches on the evolutionary tree, well over a hundred million years.
In the mammal family, there are three orders: placentals, marsupials, and monotremes. The vast majority of mammals are placentals, a distinction being that the placental fetus develops in the uterus. Most marsupials- but not all- have pouches for their young to develop in. Then there’s this asshole, the monotreme.
Monotremes are the only order of mammals that lay eggs, and the term is derived from Greek meaning ‘one hole.’ This refers to the hole the platypus uses to shit, piss, and fuck. Efficient buggers. They nurse their young, but the milk delivery system is unique. Instead of a centralized area on the chest for milk to flow through- a nipple, if you will- the mammary glands just kinda secrete milk through the pores across the monotreme chest.
You may have heard of its spiny cousin with a four-headed penis and an anteater’s nose, the echidna, but probably not. The echidna deserves a bit more respect and at least four dick jokes.
The male platypus has venomous spurs on their hind legs that’s strong enough to kill a small animal. If you one day make the ill-fated decision to try picking up one of these five pound rascals in the wild? It won’t kill you, but the pain’s been described as “excruciating.” Play Australia games, win Australia prizes.
So how can we have so much variation amongst mammals? Time. This little guy is older than some dinosaurs. It’s hard to pinpoint the number of millions of years we’re working with here, but an estimate on when monotremes split from other mammals is typically set at 160 million years ago, with animals we might recognize to be the platypus appearing about 110 million years old. The echidnas branched off from the platypus somewhere between 50 and 20 million years ago, going from a semi-aquatic species to a land animal that’s a decent swimmer.
Just in case they weren’t weird enough, they glow under UV light, and we don’t have a fucking clue why.
This has been your daily Moment of Science, continually worried and titillated about the next weird thing I find out about Australia.
To get tales of NASA funded dolphin hand jobs, rocket scientist orgies, and… Australia… sent to your inbox, head to patreon.com/scibabe.
Join the discussion!