On Platypodes

The platypus is a highly misunderstood creature and considerably the best animal ever of all time.  It's simply the best thing that evolution or SweetBabyJesus' Father or Gaia (or whatever creation myth you believe in) ever created.  It's a fact.  I've seen a platypus for real in Australia, it's natural habitat (at a zoo), so I am a goddamn expert on these things and you can just shut your mouth and learn something.  I  assure you that the platypus is 100% awesome.

The majestic Ornithorhynchus anatinus
Photo courtesy of WWF.

The plural of platypus is platypodes, because platypus comes from the Greek wording for "flat foot" and that's just how this plural stuff works. Despite being an English teacher, I don't want to take the time to explain this to you so you should just watch this informative video from the people at Mirriam-Webster.  They actually make dictionaries and so can explain it better than I, because they know dictionaries while I constantly use dictionaries.  However, they do not know as much about platypodes as I do, and, as the video actually explains the plural of the octopus (née-octopodes-née-octopusses), it's probably best that you keep reading because that might allow you to drift away from this very important topic at hand.

PLATYPODES.

Holy crap! Are they cute or what?! 
Photo courtesy of The Independent

The first thing I can tell you (as the expert who has seen this magnificent mammal in person), is that the platypus is a lot smaller than you think. And that makes platypodes even more adorable. PLATYPODES ARE ADORABLE AND THAT IS FINAL.  Who doesn't like small things? They fit in your hand! Eeeeeeeeeee! And you know what else? THEY ARE FLIPPING BALLS OUT AWESOME. I'm not lying. If platypodes were people, they would be goddamned superheroes. Why?

BALLS OUT AWESOMENESS FACTOR #1: 

Egg Laying Mammal 

(+20% awesomeness)

Well, for starters, they are monotremes, which means they are mammals that lay eggs. Wikipedia tells us this:

Monotremes were very poorly understood for many years, and to this day some of the 19th century myths that grew up around them endure. It is still sometimes thought, for example, that the monotremes are "inferior" or quasi-reptilian, and that they are a distant ancestor of the "superior" placental mammals. It now seems clear that modern monotremes are the survivors of an early branching of the mammal tree; a later branching is thought to have led to the marsupial and placental groups. 

Basically, that is saying that monotremes are not reptiles, but ancient animals of awesomeness that developed before the awesomeness that was marsupials (kangaroos) and placental groups (peoples).  They are ancient! They lay eggs! But you know what's crazier than that?  There are only two kinds of monotremes in existence, the platypus and the echidna or spiny anteater - also known as this guy:

Better than Sonic, not as cool as platypodes

SEGA owns this bad boy

BALLS OUT AWESOMENESS FACTOR #2: 

Frankenstein's mammal

(+20% awesomeness; 40% awesomeness TOTAL)

Just in case you can't tell from the totes adorb pictures above, platypodes are quite a conglomerate of disparate species and parts. First, they have a duck bill. For the record, birds lay eggs, but birds are not mammals.  The platypus has a duck-bill, lays eggs, but it is not a bird, it's Frankenstein's mammal! (SIDEBAR: A common misconception is that the monster in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein was called "Frankenstein" though "Dr. Frankenstein's monster" really never had a name but "The Monster"; therefore, it seemed inappropriate for me to dub platypodes as "Frankenmammals" even though the term sounds far more pleasing to the ear than "Frankenstein's mammal".)

Unlike birds, platypodes' "bills" don't open like the mouths of birds, because their bills are simply a sensory organ that includes a too-special-to-be-named-until-later-in-the-list trait and their nostrils, which they can close when underwater (just like Kevin Costner's magic gills in Waterworld).  

The platypodes mouths are beneath the snout and open differently than most mammals because they have a  magical extra clavicle that no other mammals have.  MAGICAL CLAVICLE.  Also, all their teeth fall out by the time they are weaned so they end up grinding food down with "hardened mounds".  I imagine them eating like my great-grandfather gnawing on Jell-O when his dentures were out.  Adorable. 

The platypus also has a beaver-like tail, which it uses to store fat.  However, the platypus tail is far more hirsute than the beaver's, as it is covered in a dense fur that insulates to keep platypodes bodies' warm.  There's a joke in there, but I'll let you go to the dirty place on your own.  

At last there's the platypodes feet, which are totes webbed kinda like sea-otter feet.  When they walk on land, they curl their adorably deadly claws up so as not to tear the webbing.  This causes them to waddle like reptiles do, which is, for the record, also adorable.

BALLS OUT AWESOMENESS FACTOR #3: 

Crazy Ladyparts

(+5% awesomeness; 45% awesomeness TOTAL)

As a lady, I am interested in lady parts.  I have claimed that if I could be any animal, I would want to be a platypus; however, if I was a lady platypus, I would definitely have to hole up once a month to avoid what biology laid out for the females of this species.  Some of you may want to skip ahead while I talk about my menses, but maybe you're curious or... something.... 

So, once every other month, my lady parts unleash the hurt upon me for 30 hours of unyielding pain known as left ovary cramps.  My cramps are always bad, but my left ovary cramps are demonic (as ladies have two ovaries, each one takes turns releasing eggs to either make you miserable or turn you preggers).  If my left ovary cramps had a face I would punch it with consecutively harder blows for 30 hours straight once every other month (that's right, Face of Cramps, a taste of your own medicine).  

If I was a lady platypus, I don't know how I would manage to deal with this, 1: because I don't think that platypodes have the ability to punch things very ferociously and mostly 2: because, while the ladies of the species do have 2 ovaries, ONLY THE LEFT ONE WORKS.  I may have to give up my dream of being a platypus.

Readers, ladies and gentlemen alike, are probably interested in the lady parts that lady platypodes do not have.  And what might that be?  It might be... nipples.  Platypodes have mammary glands, but do not have titties.  "But they're mammals, so they produce milk..." some of you geniuses might realize and then question, "How do they nurse their tiny, adorable babies?" And you would have to be as brilliant as TR Grant, M Griffiths, and RMC Leckie, genius zoologists who wrote a whole damned paper about platypodes lactation to figure that out because Mama just leaks that sh*t right out her pores.  There are grooves all over Mama-pus' abdomen that the milk pools in and the littleuns just lap it up.  Which is cute, until you think about it this way:

Drink up, Babies!

BALLS OUT AWESOMENESS FACTOR #4: 

Toxic Toenails

(+30% awesomeness; 75% awesomeness TOTAL)

As some of you may know, platypodes are balls out awesomely poisonous. While the ladies have their crazy internal parts, the gentlemen can cause a blight with their hind legs alone.  Both males and females are born with ankle spurs (not really their toenails, I just liked the alliteration), but only the males of the species can produce a venom comprised of defensin-like proteins. The venom is potent enough to kill small things like dogs and - while not lethal to humans - can cause edema around the surrounding area as well as extended (think weeks or months) hypersensitivity to pain. Platypodes surrender to no man! Man surrenders to the spurs!

Having awesome spurs, platypus, does not a good cowboy make

Platypodes are one of very few venomous mammals. Their competition includes the lame likes of shrews, solenodons, moles, and the slow loris. It should be noted that these animals spread their venom through bites, whereas the platypus is too good for biting.  He's all about kicking ass, taking names, no prisoners, and fighting for his right to party... with the ladies.  Modern zoologists believe that, though the platypus is capable of incapacitating prey, he generally uses it as an "offensive weapon to assert dominance" during the breeding season. Kinky!

BALLS OUT AWESOMENESS FACTOR #5: 

Electric Boogaloo

(+25% awesomeness; 100% awesomeness)

Yeah, so, the platypus...it's ELECTRIC. While the awesomeness percentage is just shy of it being poisonous, it is nonetheless one of the coolest things in the history of cool things.  "So, it's electric..." you may ask, "Can it power a motor?" And I would answer "no that's a ridiculous notion", but I'm fairly certain a platypus could drive a stick shift because it is just that flipping awesome (and I'm even more jealous of the platypus now, because I can't drive stick).

You've heard of echolocation, the thing that those "blind as" bats use to navigate and find food and basically see in the dark, right?  The platypus is kind of like that, only it uses electrolocation.  Even the word sounds awesome.  'Member earlier when I said platypodes have this duck bill and it's got something really special in it besides gill-like nostrils? Well, this is it. Wikipedia has some fancy academic language that explains it in detail:

The electroreceptors are located in rostro-caudal rows in the skin of the bill, while mechanoreceptors (which detect touch) are uniformly distributed across the bill. The electrosensory area of the cerebral cortex is contained within the tactile somatosensory area, and some cortical cells receive input from both electroreceptors and mechanoreceptors, suggesting a close association between the tactile and electric senses. Both electroreceptors and mechanoreceptors in the bill dominate the somatotopic-map of the Platypus brain, in the same way human hands dominate the Penfield homunculus map. 

The Platypus can determine the direction of an electric source, perhaps by comparing differences in signal strength across the sheet of electroreceptors. This would explain the characteristic side-to-side motion of the animal's head while hunting. The cortical convergence of electrosensory and tactile inputs suggests a mechanism for determining the distance of prey items which, when they move, emit both electrical signals and mechanical pressure pulses: the difference between the times of arrival of the two signals would allow computation of distance. 

The Platypus feeds by neither sight nor smell, closing its eyes, ears, and nose each time it dives. Rather, when it digs in the bottom of streams with its bill, its electroreceptors detect tiny electrical currents generated by muscular contractions of its prey, so enabling it to distinguish between animate and inanimate objects, which continuously stimulate its mechanoreceptors.

Did you get all that? The platypus hunts by feeling electricity in it's awesome duck-bill.  It can even tell distances! It can't see, hear, or breathe underwater, but it eats by feeling the vibe of the electric currents surrounding it. Amazing.  

THE PUISSANT PLATYPUS. 100% AWESOME

Yep, he basically wins at life
Australia Fauna

Congratulations, platypus, you will always be #1 in my book.  Do you not agree, best animal ever of all time?  Still not sold?  Really?  Here... look at a picture of some babies: