Just watching NatGeo and the narrator said the platypus was one of TWO mammals on earth thay lays eggs.
Two?
What’s the other one?
Echidna.
And cute little fellows they are!
Echidna facts:
[ul][li]A young echidna is called a puggle.[/li]Male echidnas have four-headed penises.[/ul]
The narrator was wrong.
The platypus lays eggs, as do all five species of echidna. So there are in fact 6 mammals on Earth that lay eggs. The 5 echidna species belong to either 2 or 3 separate genera, so saying that there are only two mammals that lay eggs is like saying that there are only two mammals that can fly.
[QUOTE=Johnny L.A.]
Echidna facts:
[ul][li]A young echidna is called a puggle.[/li][li]Male echidnas have four-headed penises.[/ul][/li][/QUOTE]
How does that work? The penis thing, I mean. Does the female echidna have a four-chambered, er, you know?
From Wiki:
I guess it’s sort of like a Gatling-penis.
Band name!
Thanks, you guys are good!
Okay, more on the 4-headed penis… There is a video on this page that shows it at about 14 seconds in. It freaking looks like a montremal version of the John Hirt messhall scene in Alien…
I can deal with the platypus laying eggs. But the thing is venomous! That’s just screwed up. (And I’ve seen pictures of an echidna penis. It’s weird)
Disclaimer: I was referring to the animal as a whole, not any particular individual piece-parts.
I’m glad THAT thing didn’t find it’s way into MY evolutionary trail. :eek:
Apologies. For some reason, only the first post came up on my monitor. Question already answered.
Both the platypus and the echidnas are venomous, but that doesn’t make them dangerous. As far as I know, they don’t have any way of delivering their venom to humans.
And I will add that I’ve patted an echidna. Those spikes look sharp, but are actually blunt on the end. Another echidna that I saw in the wild, while driving on a back road in Tasmania, decided to try to hide from us by digging a hole in the road. It was a dirt road, but still – it would have been easier for it to escape fro us by just walking off to the side of the road and hiding in the bushes, since it didn’t manage to dig very far down!
The platypus definitely can - the males have a poson spur on the hind leg. Reportedly, it’s nasty stuff. The wiki article claims:
That’s consistent with what I’ve heard before.
Are there any other egg-laying mammals (besides the platypus and echidna) thought to have existed at any other times in Earth’s history?
Is there any way for science to determine (from fossil eveidence) that a mammal was an egg-layer?
The therapsids layed eggs. Therapsids aren’t mammals, per se, but are direct mammalian ancestors who had a LOT of mammalian characteristics (fur, differentiated teeth, mammalian-type jaws) but still laid eggs.
Also, the wikipedia article on monotremes has a listing of monotremes known only through fossils at the end of the article.
[QUOTE=Johnny L.A.]
Echidna facts:
[ul][li]A young echidna is called a puggle.[/li][li]Male echidnas have four-headed penises.[/ul][/li][/QUOTE]
And what sort of penises do female echidnas have?