Is This Earth's Weirdest Mammal!?
Dive into the life of this venomous, egg-laying monotreme that senses electricity and blurs the line between duck, beaver, and otter.
Imagine a mammal that lays eggs, looks like a mix between a beaver, otter, and duck, can deliver venom from a gland in its foot, and has terrible vision. But as a saving grace, this mammal can detect faint electrical signals its prey generates.
Believe it or not, this isn’t fiction. Because this animal actually exists right here on Earth: the platypus.
Habitat & Distribution
Platypuses are semiaquatic monotremes native to eastern Australia. They inhabit mainland river systems and Tasmania. They prefer freshwater habitats such as rivers, streams, lakes, ponds, and glacial tarns, digging burrows into banks for shelter and nesting to raise their young.
Diet
Platypuses are nature’s foragers. They spend half their waking hours underwater hunting for their favorite prey, such as bottom-dwelling invertebrates (mayfly larvae, water beetles, dragonfly, and nymphs) and smaller crustaceans like shrimp, snails, and sometimes even worms, aiming to consume 20% of their bodyweight.
But hatchlings don’t immediately consume the same foods. They rely primarily on the milk produced by their mother’s mammary patches and transition to the same diet of crustaceans and larvae after a few months.
Reproduction
As monotremes (hopefully you figured out that definition from the previous screenshot), female platypuses lay eggs (usually two per clutch) in a burrow chamber they dig out much prior. After an approximately 16-day gestation period (extremely fast; in comparison, ducks have a gestation period ranging from 26-35 days), the eggs incubate for 6–10 days while the mother coils around them with her tail pressed against her bill to keep them warm.
Hatchlings use an egg tooth to break free, and although the mother produces milk, she has no nipples; as I mentioned earlier, the mother produces her milk from mammary patches located on her abdomen.
Venom
The platypus can even produce venom to add craziness to one animal. However, only mature males produce venom in paired spurs on their hind feet, with output peaking during the breeding season. This toxin likely evolved through the convergence of reptilian venom proteins and likely aids in male-male competition, which peaks during breeding season. In humans, it disrupts blood regulation and pain pathways, causing an intense reaction which includes swelling, cold sweats, and nausea. Thankfully, platypuses don’t purposefully target people unless provoked.
Electroreception
When the platypus swims underwater, it seals its eyes, ears, and nostrils. It is completely without any senses except touch. The animal does this to protect its vital organs from murky water and because it has a unique adaptation to help it navigate its environment: electroreception. The platypus relies on mechanoreceptors and electroreceptors in its bill to hunt its prey. These specialized cells detect movement and the weak electric fields produced by muscular contractions of prey, guiding the animal to buried invertebrates without any other senses being active.
This adaptation is one of the most unique and interesting in the animal kingdom, in my opinion.
Population & Conservation
Globally, the platypus is classified as Near Threatened by the IUCN (2016), with numbers down ~30 % on average since European settlement. Regionally, it’s listed as Vulnerable in Victoria and Endangered in South Australia, though the species is listed as Common anywhere else in its range. So, what are some of the key threats to the platypus? The list is comprehensive, but habitat destruction, waterway pollution, climate extremes, and introduced predators are the most notable.
Drawing of the Week
For this week’s drawing, I tried my best to make it more related to the animal I am writing about. I’m glad to say this is the closest I’ve gotten so far to matching the animal while maintaining the abstractness of the art. When I look at the platypus, the tail stands out most to me, so I decided to make it as bulky and layered as possible. As you can see here, the layers get darker as the tail gets more bulky, somewhat representing my imagination of a platypus. I know the platypus doesn’t actually have any cream colors on it, but I thought cream looked cool with brown, so I just went with it. The body looks robotic just based on how I drew it, but that was intentional, as my initial goal was to make it look almost like a cyborg. That’s also why it has only one eye. Platypuses have webbed feet, which is what my attempt was, but it turned out even cooler than webbed feet. The feet look almost like fins or wings of some sort. I wanted to add normal platypus legs to my abstract creature, but I realize now that what I added looks a lot cooler, almost like the tail feathers of a bird. Finally, I know I mentioned how the platypus can sense electric fields in its environment while hunting, so I wanted to add some unique ability to my creature to show its electric field-sensing ability. Which is why there are blue electricity symbols around the bill of our creature. Let me know what you all thought of this week’s edition of Animal of the Week. Thank you for reading till the end. See you next week!
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