Platypus – Facts, Pictures and more

London, 1798—One day a tall, sunburnt man, swaying a little in his walk as sailors do, waited patiently to see a famous professor. Luckily, he did not have to wait long. The professor, one of the most important naturalists of England, appeared and invited him into his office. The sailor, a little ill at ease, hat in hand and a package under his right arm, looked around. He saw stuffed animals placed here and there, a large number of bottles ranged on the shelves, and a long white marble table toward which he went at a sign from the professor. He stammered a few words and put the package down on the cold marble. He opened it unhurriedly. And there “it” was, between the two men. It was an unknown dead animal, a sort of big mole with rumpled fur and an odd beak, like a duck. The professor took up a magnifying glass and the sailor started to talk. He said that he had come from a far place, a new continent, Australia. Yes, that animal had been captured at Hawkesbury, in New South Wales. It lived there with others like it, by a stream. The natives say that the female lays eggs and that the male has spurs on his hind legs that can cause serious wounds because they inject a poisonous liquid. The professor looked at the sailor, went back to the animal, and then rendered his decision: Humbug!
This was a time of sensational discoveries and hoaxes. The newspapers printed stories about sailors cheated by Chinese embalmers who sold them fabricated mummies, at fabulous prices. Some of the sailors had even brought back “mermaids” manufactured from the cadavers of monkeys, to which fishtails had been skilfully sewn. This duck-billed creature must be the work of a forger. Such was the opinion given, with great calm, by Mr. George Shaw, eminent professor of the British Museum. Since the sailor insisted, the professor was kind enough to promise him to make a more detailed examination. He would consult a learned colleague. If the sailor could possibly arrange to come back a few days later, he would get his answer.

And the sailor came back, to be told that his animal had gone off to Gottingen for definitive study by one of the greatest scientific authorities of the time, Johann Fried- rich Blumenbach. He was a shining light of medicine and zoology, and one of the fathers of modern anthropology. And Blumenbach confirmed what Shaw had come around to suspecting: the remains were those of a genuine animal. That is how, at the end of the eighteenth century, the existence of the platypus, or ornithorhynchus, was discovered—the egg-laying mammal, which can give fatal wounds with the poisonous spurs of its hind legs. Actually, it probably only kills its own kind, and then only in battles among males that humans have imagined but that no one has reported seeing.

In 1809 the French scientist Lamarck classified the platypus and the other animals of the same order in a class belonging to neither the mammals nor the reptiles.

The platypus continues to live its mysterious life and tiles to avoid man. And man, the animal’s great enemy who waged an unrelenting war upon it to get its silky fur, is now protecting it. At least most people in Australia are attempting to prevent its extinction.

The platypus makes its burrow among the roots of trees, in skilfully concealed grottoes with several entrances. But the female is not satisfied with this communal dwelling; she requires another for herself when it is time for her to lay her eggs, in order to protect her brood. This nest is set in the bank above the level of a lake or river, and is carpeted with wet eucalyptus leaves, When everything is ready, the female closes all the entrances of her retreat and, in the darkness, lays two or three eggs no bigger than those of a pigeon.

When the incubation period is over, the young one about to be hatched uses its egg- tooth, a hard excrescence on the maxillary bone, to split the shell. Birds usually use the egg-tooth on their upper beaks for that purpose, but the platypus has no beak at birth. The beak forms later, when the young platypus stops feeding on its mother’s milk, and when it must learn to dive under the water in search of small crabs, worms and molluses. During these dives it closes its eyes and ears, and seeks food with its sensitive beak.

This animal is very much affected by noise. It is said that platypuses have been killed by loud noises. One of them, being sent to Winston Churchill as a gift, died on board ship just outside of Liverpool. It was during the Second World War, and the sea lanes were infested by German submarines. A depth bomb exploded nearby, causing the walls of the ship to vibrate. The platypus was mortally hurt; an hour later it was dead.

Platypus Pictures: