It just sucks how one day you’re living your life, minding your own business, and then the next thing you know, your mind is full of images of little, freshly hatched platypuses slurping up the milky sweat oozing from their mother’s furry stomach, coating it a wet, creamy film. This makes it look like sweat, but in fact platypuses are aquatic and don’t produce regular sweat at all.Īnd here, a video about platypuses that includes an absolutely chilling graphic of a beautiful mother platypus leaking her milk all over her tummy while a little baby platypus in a backward baseball cap laps it up. But platypuses don’t have teats, so the milk just oozes from the surface of their skin. They secrete milk from specialised mammary glands, just like humans and other mammals. Immediately, I threw the book down and Googled, “Platypuses sweat milk?” Here, an explanation from the BBC’s Science Focus: I came across this fact by accident, when it was mentioned offhand in a book I was reading. Platypuses don’t have nipples, so they just sweat milk. A terrible piece of knowledge had permanently severed me from my past, and now, because hurt people hurt people, I must share it with you as well. And then, a few weeks ago, when I finally saw the glaring light of the truth, it was so blinding and terrible that I yearned to return to the shadows, where I had been safe. I didn’t know what I didn’t know, and so what I didn’t know couldn’t hurt me. I was happy then, splashing around in the cold, dank recesses of my own ignorance. It seems pretty bizarre, but then that’s only to be expected with such a fascinating and unique creature.Look, I’m sorry to do this to you, but I refuse to stay silent any longer. Based on the latest genome mapping, the researchers think they these sex chromosomes were once in a ring formation and then broke up into pieces. Platypuses have five pairs of sex chromosomes compared to our one pair. Still, there are plenty of mysteries about the platypus left to unravel, like the fact that their sex chromosomes seem to have more in common with birds than regular mammals.
However, Platypuses have mammal-like genes for making milk, suggesting that the trait is derived from a common ancestor that was around before monotremes and live-birthing mammals diverged. So, presumably, some ancient ancestral mammals lost their vitellogenin genes and with it, our egg-laying talents, while the ancient ancestor of the monotremes held on to it. Most mammals don’t have this gene, but platypuses and their cousins do have one copy of the gene, allowing them to continue to lay eggs. Researchers from Universities in Australia, China, Japan, USA and Denmark have now mapped 96% of the platypus genome and have already started uncovering clues that could help us understand more about the evolution of mammals.įor example, most birds and insects have multiple copies of a gene called vitellogenin, which is involved in producing egg yolk. Although the platypus genome was first sequenced in 2008, scientists had only properly mapped about 25% of the genes in there, with the rest remaining a mystery. In search of some genetic explanations for the platypus’ unique characteristics, back in January 2021 scientists published the most complete genome sequence of the platypus to date. Learning more about the platypus and echidna could help uncover evolutionary clues about things like how life evolved from egg laying reptiles to birthing mammals. Platypuses are often considered a mix of mammalian and reptile because of their features but, in truth, they are the least understood mammal. Platypuses and their closest relatives - four species of echidna - are all found in Australia and are the only living examples of monotremes - mammals that lay eggs.
#Does a duck billed platypus have a stomach skin
And although they’re warm-blooded and technically classed as mammals, they lay eggs rather than giving birth to live young, and feed their babies by sweating milk out through their skin (yuck). They have webbed feet with electroreceptors that help them to track prey, decorated with venomous spurs and attached to limbs that stick out from their sides like reptiles. Among their bizarre characteristics are a bill like a duck, a tail like a beaver, and no stomach or teeth. Click here to listen to the full podcast episodeīy any standard, platypuses are weird, with a seemingly random collection of features that look like they pressed the evolutionary shuffle button a little too enthusiastically.
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