The ancient philosopher and all-around wise guy Confucius once said “If you look into your own heart, and you find nothing wrong there, what is there to worry about? What is there to fear?” The message is a heartwarming one, that our true inner strength lied within us all along and that we can overcome any obstacle if we just step out of our comfort zone. Confucius though, for all his wisdom, didn’t get out of the house much. There are plenty of things that are still scary even after you look into your own heart, like landmines, public speaking, and the particular creature featured in the cover image.
The platypus is not an evolutionarily likely creature. If you described it to someone who had never seen one, they would probably think you were insane. That very thing happened to the early European explorers who returned to their homelands with drawings of the creature, which were dismissed as hoaxes. It makes sense; in what kind of depraved hellhole would you find crosses between ducks, beavers, moles, bats, scorpions, and electric eels? The answer to that question, like with every other unholy product of Satan in this world, is Australia. These brave pioneers of the land down under assumedly ended up being cast out of society and dying alone because of their findings, which probably still left them better off than being on the receiving end of an angry platypus.
Platypuses are venomous, the only such mammals outside of a couple of kinds of shrew. The venom comes from a spike situated near their ankle, and is powerful enough to kill small dogs or leave a human in excruciating pain. They also locate prey using electroreception, the detection of the small electrical currents that facilitate muscle movements. Like a little, furry shark, except with a duck-bill and beaver tail. There’s probably a great deal more secrets these depraved cuddle-goblins have lying in store, but efforts to study them have mostly been unpromising. They spend most of their time in burrows or murky water, and the platypuses brought into captivity largely wind up dead.
They spend the majority of their waking hours hunting, usually for worms and shellfish, where they use mouthfuls of gravel to assist in the chewing of food. The bulk of the nutrients get stored in the tail. But if you thought that we’re getting towards the end; that these creatures only have so many tricks up their sleeves, then think again. The females lay eggs, one of the only examples of mammals to do so. They also lack nipples, so secrete milk from pores in their skin in the same way as sweat. Yes, you just read both of those things correctly. They also have retractable webbing.
Usually, there are specific tradeoffs to any sort of evolutionary advantage. Dogs get a sharp sense of smell but aren’t always the brightest, for example, and humans have opposable thumbs but lack the raw strength of an animal like the bear or gorilla. The platypus doesn’t care. At some point it looked at mother nature, laughed in one of its evil squeaks, and said, “screw you, I’ll do what I want.” And so it did. They also have no stomach, and one hole for everything.
