“An egg-laying, venomous, electricity-sensing mammal that glows in the dark.”

The platypus looks like the result of a committee that never reached agreement. It's a mammal that lays eggs, has a bill like a duck, a tail like a beaver, webbed feet like an otter, and, in the males, a venomous spur on each hind leg that can drop a dog and ruin a human's week. When the first specimen reached European scientists, they assumed it was a hoax stitched together from spare parts. It has no stomach and no teeth, grinding food with gravel instead. With its eyes, ears, and nose sealed shut underwater, it hunts entirely by detecting the faint electric fields of its prey with its bill — a sense almost no other mammal has. And as if to settle the matter, its fur glows a soft blue-green under ultraviolet light. Nobody knows why. The platypus isn't telling.

Scientific name

Ornithorhynchus anatinus

Size

House-cat sized (up to ~50 cm).

Habitat

Freshwater rivers and streams of eastern Australia.

Diet

Insect larvae, worms, and shellfish, found by electroreception.

Conservation

NT · Near Threatened

Picnic threat level

Picnic threat: low, but do not pick up the cute one — it's armed.

Charles J. Sharp, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons · Learn more →