![]() And their gene code shows ancestry from each of these animal groups! Their eyeballs are wrapped in cartilage like a bird but shaped like those of other water mammals. Their fur fluoresces under UV light like some marsupials. They then zero in, using sensitive pressure receptors that can detect tiny movements in the water-less than the thickness of a human hair. It has two types of electroreceptors, using direct current to avoid large objects when swimming and alternating current to detect the muscle activity of their prey. They close their eyes, ears, and nostrils underwater, so they rely on their bill to navigate. They spend much of their time underwater at night, making over a thousand short dives in a 24-hour period, hunting worms, crayfish, and water insects. Males have sharp spurs on their back legs that can inject poison potent enough to send a human to the hospital. ![]() But they also produce milk to nurse their young once hatched.Īnd they’re one of the few venomous mammals. Platypuses are monotremes, one of just three mammals-all in Australia-that lay eggs. They’re famous for having a duckbill and a beaver tail. ![]() We’ve talked about some weird animals on EarthDate, but the platypus may be the strangest. This photograph uses a yellow filter that reveals a “truer” color of the fur’s fluorescence. Credit: Jonathan Martin, Northland College, Anich et al., 2020 Platypuses are biofluorescent, meaning their fur glows a bluish-green hue under ultraviolet (UV) light.
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