THE DUCKBILL or PLATYPUS 



(Ornithorhynchus anatinus) 



FOR many years it was reported by the natives of Australia that the 

 extraordinary warm-blooded quadruped known to naturalists as the duck- 

 bill, or platypus, produced its young from eggs laid in a burrow by the 

 female. That a mammal— and a mammal, although of an altogether peculiar and 

 out of the way type, the creature undoubtedly is — should lay eggs was, however, too 

 much for the minds of stay-at-home naturalists, and the fiat accordingly went forth 

 that the native story was to be discredited. And discredited it therefore was. In 

 nature, as in other things, truth will, however, ultimately prevail ; and we now know 

 for certain that the female lays in a burrow in the bank of some river or pool a couple 

 of hard-shelled, oval eggs, which in due course hatch out into naked, helpless young, 

 furnished with soft sucking lips. Not that they suck in the ordinary mammalian 

 fashion, for the female platypus has no nipples, but her milk oozes out in the 

 breast from a number of sieve-like pores, from the surface of which it is sucked up 

 by her offspring. 



Such a difference from the ordinary mammalian way of doing business 

 proclaims the wide distinction between the platypus, and, it may be added, its 

 relatives the spiny ant-eaters or echidnas (one of which forms the subject of another 

 illustration), and all other warm-blooded quadrupeds. Nor is this all, for in the 

 structure of their skeleton and soft internal parts the platypus and the echidna 

 display many marks of affinity with reptiles and birds, which are totally wanting in 

 other mammals. These two creatures represent indeed a group by themselves, so 

 that mammals may be divided into two great primary sections, the one embracing 

 only the two egg-laying types, and the other all the rest. 



And it is not a little significant that the egg-layers are confined to Australia 

 and New Guinea, the home of many other primitive and ancient types which have 

 disappeared from the rest of the world. In one sense indeed the platypus and the 

 echidna are not exactly primitive creatures, as they have several specialised characters 

 which were evidently wanting in their ancestors. They may rather be described as 

 specialised branches of an ancient and primitive stock. 



The duckbill is a heavily made aquatic mammal of about the size of a 

 very short-legged rabbit, with blackish, mole-like fur above, passing gradually 

 into whitish beneath, and a short, thick, tapering tail. The very short limbs 

 terminate in thick toes, connected together by a web and armed with strong, 

 pointed claws. In the fore-feet the margin of the web projects considerably beyond 

 the claws, but on the rare occasions that the animal leaves the water the margin 



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