Animal · Australia
Platypus
Ornithorhynchus anatinus — the name this animal has in the language scientists everywhere share.
The platypus is an Australian mammal that lays eggs, has a bill like a duck and webbed feet, and hunts underwater with its eyes closed. Its bill picks up the faint electric signals of little animals hidden in the mud.
Picture credit: Charles J. Sharp (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Wikimedia Commons
Where does the platypus live?
Home: Rivers and creeks in eastern Australia and Tasmania.
In the wild it lives in these countries: Australia.
Conservation status from the IUCN: close to being at risk.
The short profile
Fully grown: males about 50 cm, females about 43 cm long. It weighs about 1.3 kilograms. On the menu: meat.
The story behind it
When the first skin reached London in 1799, scientists suspected a hoax and looked for the stitches. Nothing about the animal fits neatly: it is a mammal with fur and warm blood, yet it lays two leathery eggs in a burrow, and the mother has no teats. She sweats milk through her skin and the young lap it from her fur. Underwater the platypus shuts its eyes, ears and nostrils and finds worms, shrimps and insect larvae with about 40 000 sensors in its bill that pick up the tiny electric pulses of moving muscles. A dive lasts around half a minute. Male platypuses carry a spur on each hind ankle with venom strong enough to make a grown person cry out with pain.
Find it on the globe
Platypus is there as a tiny animated figure that breathes and looks around. From far away the planet is only a blue ball; detail arrives as you zoom in, and this one appears once you are close enough. Open it on the globe.
It sits at its real coordinates, not near them — the same numbers listed in the facts above. Switch off the layer for this kind of place and it disappears again; the buttons for that are down the right-hand edge.
Questions children ask
Does a platypus really lay eggs?
Yes. It is one of only five mammals in the world that lay eggs instead of giving birth. The female lays about two soft, leathery eggs in a burrow and curls around them until they hatch.
Is a platypus poisonous?
The males are. Each hind ankle carries a sharp spur linked to a venom gland, and a jab causes pain so severe that painkillers barely help. It is not deadly to people, but it is one of the very few venomous mammals.
How does a platypus find food with its eyes shut?
With its bill. Around 40 000 sensors in the skin of the bill pick up the weak electric pulses that every moving muscle gives off, so a shrimp digging in the mud gives itself away without being seen or heard.
Where these numbers come from
Every figure on this page was checked against public reference sources before publication. Where sources genuinely disagree, the text says so.
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