It is worth mentioning that when the first stuffed sample of platypus was sent to Britain, the scientists thought it is a joke.
And some of those same scientists later organized a mass slaughter of thousands of platypuses in order to determine if the stories about them were true. Science, bitches!
As a platypus lays eggs and produces milk, it’s the only animal that can make its own custard.
It’s heavily regulated now as someone sold one of the male drumsticks that still had the venomous spur attached at a Saturday farmers market.
Fortunately most of the venom was deactivated by frying it but they still had to be hospitalised for a week.
I wonder how they'd be for pets.
I realize I shouldn't.
but. I kinda want one. They're cute.
(again, I realize I shouldn't!)
Hell, we'll even try to domesticate things that are anything but cute, like crocodiles, fish and spiders
The UV light thing wasn't discovered (or at least published) until 2020.
Phineas and Ferb ended in 2015.
They also don't have nipples (though do have mammary glands) and mother platypuses basically sweat milk through their skin for the pups to collect off their fur
The milk pools in grooves on the mother's abdomen, allowing the young to lap it up.
So I guess that's partly why most mammals' milk glands are in the abdomen. Other than primates, I only know that elephants also have mammaries on the breasts
You got an ancestor that did that too. Part of why platypuses are so damn weird is because mammalian ancestors kept facing evolutionary bottlenecks. Platypuses are more like proto mammals than us placentals
I thought you put capybara and just kinda thought you were also implying they were a pseudo SCP.
Stomachs aren't necessary... You can jump straight to the large intestine. Even humans can survive like that
Obviously, they're useful. It's another stage of digestion, which means more energy and nutrients are extracted from your food. It widens your viable food sources, just like chewing does
Evolution was all like: Ok, so which mutations would you like to advance? The venomous thing? The aquatic thing? The electrocuting enemies thing? The no stomach hack? The "Fun at parties" hack?
Platypus: Yes.
An excellent example of spending your points all over the place and somehow ending up with an actually pretty broken build.
"broken build" here likely refers to the phrase as defined by gamers to function as synonymous to "overpowered".
As in, "the build is so broken you can't/it is difficult to play against it". This phraseology could be used by either an ally or an enemy, but it contextually changes connotation from positive for allies to negative for enemies.
Build is often used as a shorthand for a character's combination of items, skills, and levels (as the various games define it).
Thanks, I (mis-?) interpreted it as a gamers build that doesn't work because they spread abilities rather than min-maxing.
It's an odd one. At a guess, the idea is that the build is so good / powerful that it breaks the game (or, indeed, the meta) for everyone else.
So they were created about the same time as dinosaurs and flowers? Evolution was feeling really creative at that part of Cretaceous.
If I remember correctly, they don't have mammalian glands and instead "sweat" thier milk for thier young.
And Dan Povenmire was the first to discover the florescence. People Perry the platypus was more scientifically accurate than you thought.
I went down this rathole.
They first grind up the bugs they eat in their mouths, then they have a chamber with bacteria which further reduce their food, then their intestines finish the job.
ETA, since you all are such curious cats:
https://wildlifefaq.com/platypus-stomach/
and
https://platypus.asn.au/platypus-myths/
The fact is that the platypus’s digestive tract does include a small expanded pouch-like section where one would normally expect a stomach to be located. The platypus’s stomach doesn’t secrete digestive acids or enzymes (Harrop and Hume 1980; Ordoñez et al. 2008), but does produce a mucus-rich fluid to assist nutrient absorption in the intestines (Krause 1971). Following on from the discussion of grinding pads above, it would seem that a platypus masticates food so thoroughly in its mouth that little additional processing is required before food reaches the intestines. Also, because a platypus consumes numerous small prey items over a period of many hours, its stomach doesn’t need to have a large holding capacity to accommodate infrequent large meals.
Sooo, "gullet"?
A pseudo-stomach? IDK...
I think since it's using bacteria and not acid, it's not a "stomach", just performs the same type of function.
Shit your being downvoted, now I have to go look myself.. if I don't return I likely have been abducted by egg laying mammals
Yes, platypuses lost their stomach during evolution, so they basically grind food using gravel and their beak before sending it to the intestine, which has taken on some of the functions performed by stomachs in other animals. Source
Will Wright took one look at this thing in an encyclopedia in 2001 and immediately started planning Spore.
You don’t see them though. The national park boards say “look for ripples in the water!”.
If you see ripples, you’re about to die.
If you see ripples, you’re about to die.
Yeah, but from which threat? Snake? Spider? Swimming kangaroo?
I meant the platypusses, but legit the number of times I’ve just been walking along a path and a snake has started thrashing around in the long grass next to me. All the snakes here are dead-in-eight-minutes type snakes.
Well, if you live in Australia, you're about to die... So many deadly things always just round the corner, or under the seat!
I'd like to be, oooohhhh my favorite animal
I want to be, oooohhhh my favorite animal
I'd be a platypus, for you
It's a Pokémon. And so far, the only one with at least 4 types: water, poison, flying and electric. How the fuck can you even counter it?