Platypus Trivia Questions

When first shipped to Europe in the late 1700s, scientists suspected a taxidermist had sewn a duck's bill onto a beaver-like body. It took years to confirm it was real.

Platypuses are monotremes—egg-laying mammals. Females incubate eggs and then nurse their young with milk, which oozes from pores on their belly since they have no nipples.

Platypuses can stay underwater for only about one to two minutes, though they are efficient divers. Thirty minutes is far beyond their physiological limits.

Platypuses paddle with their webbed front feet; their broad, flat tail is used for steering and storing fat, not as a primary swimming rudder.

A platypus's bill is packed with electroreceptors that pick up the tiny electrical signals from muscle movements of prey underwater, helping them hunt with eyes and ears closed.

Male platypuses have a spur on each hind foot that delivers a venom strong enough to kill small animals and cause excruciating pain in humans. It's a rare mammalian venom system.

Platypuses lack a true stomach—no gastric glands or acid. Food goes straight from the esophagus to the intestines. They share this odd trait with some other egg-laying mammals.

The echidna, also a monotreme, lays eggs and has spurs, though only the platypus has functional venom. So the platypus isn't the sole egg-laying, venomous mammal.