The study was published last week…” story continued here at ScienceDaily.

…They’re venomous? They have how many sex chromosomes?? They might save the world?!? (Not joking about that last one…read on as I cover the basics, and the not-so-basics, of nature’s most beloved WTF moment.)

1. The mammalian egg-layer. Just because the platypus isn’t the only monotreme (it’s one of five), doesn’t make the fact any less perplexing. The platypus seems to represent an evolutionary fork in the road, like an animal that wanted the sweet perks of lactation without all the messiness of the live birth. Who can blame them, really? Oh, and about that lactation? The platypus female has no nipples, so the milk is just released straight through the pores of its skin. Talk about cutting out the middleman.

2. The duck bill. The electric field-sensing duck bill. Yes, we all know about that characteristically out-of-place-looking duck bill that appears to be glued on to the face of a more normal animal. It’s kind of humorous and it makes the platypus easily identifiable (and very amenable to cartoon depiction). As if a duck bill on a mammal wasn’t perplexing enough, nature equipped it with electrosensors. Incredibly, part of how a platypus tracks its prey is by detecting the electric fields generated by the prey’s muscle contractions. The platypus hunts not by sight, not by smell, but by electricity detection. Nice.

Platypus venom gland and duct

3. The excruciatingly painful venom. You see, I spent most of my life thinking of platypuses as cute, cuddly little guys. Recently, however, I’ve reneged on the “cuddly” part. Turns out, a male platypus can release an impressive venom from a spur on the hind foot; the venom doesn’t kill you, but you will feel a pain so intense that it may incapacitate you, and you might be extra pain-sensitive for as long as months. Coincidentally, venomous mammals are extremely rare — just like everything else about the platypus.

4. The absurd number of sex chromosomes. At this point, if you’re starting to feel a bit lacking compared to the platypus, don’t be too hard on yourself — they do have five times as many sex chromosomes as you do. A human female or male is XX or XY, respectively, but a platypus female or male is XXXXXXXXXX or XYXYXYXYXY. I won’t speculate as to why the platypus has so many of these, but because it overachieves in all other areas, I also won’t question it. As far as its other, non-sex chromosomes, the platypus genome has been found to include genes that have origins in birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fish. Is your brain hurting yet?

5. The ability to save us from superbacteria. Now let’s take things beyond the limits of what’s reasonable (if we hadn’t already). New research out of Australia has found that strong antimicrobial peptides are expressed in the platypus, and these peptides are effective against a broad range of bacteria. Because these antimicrobials are peptides, and not chemicals, they are promising candidates for natural treatments to fight multidrug resistant bacteria. Currently, there are very few options for defending against superbugs, and some may soon be resistant to all currently existing antibiotics.

So maybe now this shirt makes a little bit more sense:

The platypus: a little bit of LOL, a whole lot of WTF, and a definite TGP (Thank Goodness for Platypuses).

Stay nerdy!

Grützner F, Rens W, Tsend-Ayush E, El-Mogharbel N, O’Brien PC, Jones RC, Ferguson-Smith MA, & Marshall Graves JA (2004). In the platypus a meiotic chain of ten sex chromosomes shares genes with the bird Z and mammal X chromosomes. Nature, 432 (7019), 913-7 PMID: 15502814

Wang J, Wong ES, Whitley JC, Li J, Stringer JM, Short KR, Renfree MB, Belov K, & Cocks BG (2011). Ancient antimicrobial peptides kill antibiotic-resistant pathogens: Australian mammals provide new options. PloS one, 6 (8) PMID: 21912615