Hello and welcome to another Fun Fact From Flora ,

The platypus is a delightful and bizarre creature. They are part of a group of mammals called the monotremes (named because they, like birds and reptiles, have a one-hole-serves-all kind of situation called a cloaca — all the excreting and mating happens in one place).

The monotremes are made up of only five living species — the platypus and four species of a wonderful animal called an echidna which looks like this.

Firstly and most importantly though. A baby platypus is called are you ready a

PUGGLE.

Fantastic isn’t it.

Even more fantastic when you find out that they look like this.

Anyways, platypuses are found only in Tasmania and eastern Australia. They are nocturnal and usually reach a maximum size of about half a metre.

Now they look very weird but are actually fabulously well-adapted to their ecological niche. They have webbed feet , kind of flat sprawling bodies and waterproof fur which is perfect for their semi-aquatic lifestyle.

Their claws make them very efficient diggers — they dig tunnels that are about 5m long in riverbanks which is where they live.

Their epic duck bills are BAD ASS and actually have electroreceptive sensors in them that allow them to detect the teeny tiny electrical impulses created by the muscle contractions of their prey. This is ideal because they have to hunt with their eyes, earsand nosesshut.

But what IS that bill? I hear you cry.

Well it’s actually made of hardened gum tissue (I KNOW — MAD) and this means that actually they don’t have teeth. Instead they use sheer force to mash the food in their mouths into a swallowable pulp.

And if that doesn’t work they will pop some stones in their mouth the help the whole process along.

Once they"ve munched that yummy food it goes straight from the oesophagus to the intestine. These guys, and their echidna cousins, are the only mammals that don’t have stomachs.

It turns out stomachs only (lol — only) evolved 450 million years ago and this was well before platypuses came along. So we don’t really understand why they have lost their stomachs.

Some people think it might be because they eat a lot of shellfish and so the calcium carbonate from the shells would neutralise the stomach acid — making the organ kinda redundant.

Another EXCELLENT and EXTREMELY RELATABLE piece of platypus biology is that they sleep for 14 hours a day , including 8 hours of REM ( Rapid Eye Movement) sleep. This is more than any other animal.

And my favourite and final weird platypus fact — they glow in the dark.

This is totally bizarre. Last year some researchers at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago had been trying to figure out the mechanisms of biofluorescence in some species in their collection. They accidentally shone some of their UV light on a platypus and its fur emitted a “blue- green glow".

This has scientists totally baffled.

It’s usually used as a means of communication or camouflage , but this makes no sense in a nocturnal species. They are most active when there is very little UV light about

All very mysterious.

AND LET"S NOT FORGET THE FACT THAT THEY LAY EGGS.

A mother digs a 30m long burrow, seals herself in and lays one or two eggs. And then instead of breastfeeding she just kind of oozes milk from her stomach that the babies drink.

Also please appreciate — this might be one of the most amazing GIFs I"ve ever seen.

LOOK HOW TINY IT IS.

Hope you enjoyed this exploration of a weird and wonderful mammal!

Love Flora xxx