Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
A platypus bill may look like a duck’s bill, but it has a secret ability. The bill contains receptor cells that detect the electric signals made by all living things. As it swims in the water ...
The platypus (Ornithorhynchus anatinus), sometimes referred to as the duck-billed platypus, is a semiaquatic, egg-laying mammal endemic to eastern Australia, including Tasmania. The platypus is the sole living representative or monotypic taxon of its family Ornithorhynchidae and genus Ornithorhynchus , though a number of related species appear ...
The platypus has an average body temperature of about 31 °C (88 °F) rather than the averages of 35 °C (95 °F) for marsupials and 37 °C (99 °F) for placentals. [ 30 ] [ 31 ] Research suggests this has been a gradual adaptation to the harsh, marginal environmental niches in which the few extant monotreme species have managed to survive ...
Platypus foot. Some semiaquatic mammals have webbed feet. Most of these have interdigital webbing, as opposed to the syndactyly found in birds. Some notable examples include the platypus, the beaver, the otter, and the water opossum. [19] [20] [21] Capybaras have slightly webbed feet, [22] while hippopotamuses have webbed toes. [23]
The monotreme platypus has what looks like a bird's beak (hence its scientific name Ornithorhynchus), but is a mammal. [38] However, it is not structurally similar to a bird beak (or any "true" beak, for that matter), being fleshy instead of keratinous. Red blood cells in mammals lack a cell nucleus.
Rheobatrachus, whose members are known as the gastric-brooding frogs or platypus frogs, is a genus of extinct ground-dwelling frogs native to Queensland in eastern Australia. The genus consisted of only two species, the southern and northern gastric-brooding frogs, both of which became extinct in the mid-1980s.
The platypus is one of the few living mammals to produce venom. The venom is made in venom glands that are connected to hollow spurs on their hind legs; it is primarily made during the mating season. [1] While the venom's effects are described as extremely painful, it is not lethal to humans.
Several groups of tetrapods have undergone secondary aquatic adaptation, an evolutionary transition from being purely terrestrial to living at least part of the time in water. These animals are called "secondarily aquatic" because although their ancestors lived on land for hundreds of millions of years, they all originally descended from ...