Baby platypuses have teeth, but soon after leaving the burrow they lose them and rely on their duck-like bills to feed. They use their bills to detect prey and to help them navigate in murky water. The bill is soft, flexible and covered with sensory receptors that can detect electrical and tactile stimule.
The platypus is an animal so rare (a mammal with bill and legs like a duck and an acuatic life) that when it was discovered there was an initial doubt about its nature. So much that it was believed that it was a bad joke.
One of the most famous platypus in the world is Perry the Platypus, from the animated TV show Phineas and Ferb. This was made because of the lack of public knowledge of the animal.
The platypus is one of the few mammals to produce venom. Males have a pair of spurs on their hind limbs which secrete venom that is only seasonally active to breeding season, supporting the theory that the use of venom is for competition of mates only, not protection though, they do compete often. While the…
Platypuses are not endangered. The International Union for Conservation of Nature lists the animals as a «Least Concern,» though the organization admits it has no idea how large or small the platypus population may be. This is due, primarily, to lack of worldwide research and data on the species.
The platypus’s most famous feature, their extraordinary beak, is used to shovel up invertebrates from stream or lake beds. They also eat the occasional frog, fish, or insect taken from the water’s surface.
It lives in the lakes and streams of eastern Australia and has also been introduced by humans to Kangaroo Island, just off Australia’s south coast.
Platypus reproduction is nearly unique. It is one of only two mammals (the echidna is the other) that lay eggs.
Platypuses hunt underwater, where they swim gracefully by paddling with their front webbed feet and steering with their hind feet and beaverlike tail.
The platypus (Ornithorhynchus anatinus), also known as the duck-billed platypus, is a semiaquatic egg-laying mammal endemic to eastern Australia.
Duck&Bill 