Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio, Hey brain Stuff
Speaker 1: Lauren Vogelbaum here. The duck bill platypus has been called
Speaker 1: a lot of things since it arrived on the zoological
Speaker 1: scene in seventeen ninety eight, but one adjective that's likely
Speaker 1: never been applied to this mammal is normal. After all,
Speaker 1: its physiology and anatomy borrow from birds, reptiles and mammals,
Speaker 1: and a baffling conglomeration. Biology experts in England laughed off
Speaker 1: the first skin and sketch brought over from its native Australia,
Speaker 1: believing it to be a hoax, and a poorly constructed
Speaker 1: one at that. Because the platypus has fur and the
Speaker 1: female nurses it's young, the animal is classified as a mammal,
Speaker 1: But a female platypus doesn't nurse with nipples. Instead, she
Speaker 1: secretes milk into folds of her abdominal skin for the babies,
Speaker 1: called puggles, to suckle on. They have duck bills and
Speaker 1: webbed feet like birds, and lay soft, leathery eggs like reptiles. Also,
Speaker 1: like birds and reptiles, platypuses only have one orifice for
Speaker 1: the excretion of digestive remains and for reproduction the chloeca.
Speaker 1: The only other living mammals on the planet with this
Speaker 1: setup are echidnased. They're together in their own special taxonomical order,
Speaker 1: the monotremes. The platypus even shares a special sensory capability
Speaker 1: with sharks. The platypus lives in and around rivers and
Speaker 1: feeds off of insects, larvae, shellfish, and worms, which it
Speaker 1: locates underwater. Because it closes its eyes and seals off
Speaker 1: its nostrils upon submersion, the scientists wondered how it manages
Speaker 1: to hunt without the help of sight or smell. It
Speaker 1: turns out that tiny pores called electroreceptors dot the platypus's bill.
Speaker 1: These pores open up into sensitive nerve endings that can
Speaker 1: detect changes in the electrical current in the water. Those
Speaker 1: electrical currents could be caused by muscle movements or sometimes
Speaker 1: by water rushing over stationary objects. As we've talked about
Speaker 1: on the show before. Elector reception is the method that
Speaker 1: lots of sharks used to hunt too. But these surprises
Speaker 1: in this anatomical funhouse don't stop there. We have to
Speaker 1: talk about another reptilian similarity platypus venom. The male platypus
Speaker 1: as a spur on either hind foot that excretes venom.
Speaker 1: Though females are also born with spurs, they fall off
Speaker 1: before adulthood. Aside from two other mammals, a certain species
Speaker 1: of shrew and solenodons, harboring venom is a trait usually
Speaker 1: reserved for reptiles and amphibians. So why would the male
Speaker 1: platypus need venom. This relatively docile animal has few predators,
Speaker 1: which include carpet snakes, eels, and foxes, and it doesn't
Speaker 1: use its venom for hunting. The only probable explanation that
Speaker 1: researchers have come up with is that males use it
Speaker 1: offensively during mating competition. To back this up, researchers point
Speaker 1: to the fact that the male platypus produces venom mostly
Speaker 1: during the spring, which is when platypus couples breed. Apparently,
Speaker 1: the venom isn't meant to kill other males, only to
Speaker 1: provide for a rousing fight. That said, for a human,
Speaker 1: getting hit with a dose of platypus venom is said
Speaker 1: to really hurt, even though the platypus only weighs around
Speaker 1: five pounds that's about two point two kilos. There have
Speaker 1: been recorded deaths due to platypus venom in pets like dogs.
Speaker 1: There have been no recorded human fatalities, but the venom
Speaker 1: will cause swelling at the wound site, an extreme pain
Speaker 1: that can last for weeks and isn't touched by drugs
Speaker 1: like morphine. Platypus venom share some molecules also found in
Speaker 1: reptile venom, but researcher is determined that the platypus's venom
Speaker 1: evolved separately, and weirdly enough, this offensive adaptation could end
Speaker 1: up helping humans. Since the platypus is one of only
Speaker 1: three mammals that produces venom, researchers want to determine the
Speaker 1: specific pain response pathway that it stimulates in humans, because again,
Speaker 1: our available painkillers don't affect it. They could then utilize
Speaker 1: that information to develop new pain relief medications and possibly antibiotics.
Speaker 1: Due to the platypus's many anomalies, more than one hundred
Speaker 1: scientists collaborated for the Platypus Genome Project, which they completed
Speaker 1: in spring of two thousand and eight. Like the human
Speaker 1: Genome Project. This undertaking sought to map the entire platypus
Speaker 1: genome to understand how an animal with such a hodgepodge
Speaker 1: of traits could have possibly evolved. They determined the platypuses
Speaker 1: split from our last common ancestor about one hundred and
Speaker 1: sixty six million years ago and share about eighty percent
Speaker 1: of the same genetic coating as other mammals. One thing
Speaker 1: that's different is that they don't have the X and
Speaker 1: Y chromosomes that determine the sexes of offspring like in
Speaker 1: many other mammals. Instead, platypus sex chromosomes more closely resemble
Speaker 1: those of primitive birds, which could provide insight into the
Speaker 1: genetic footprinting that led to our own coding. Now that
Speaker 1: scientists know more about how this Australian animal evolved, it's
Speaker 1: raised more questions as to why it is the way
Speaker 1: it is and how it relates to mammals and birds
Speaker 1: and reptiles. In just over two hundred years, the platypus
Speaker 1: has ascended from a tax durmy hoax to a venomous
Speaker 1: guide into the animal kingdom's many genetic puzzles. Today's episode
Speaker 1: is based on the article code a platypus poison Me
Speaker 1: on how stuffworks dot com, written by Kristin Conger. Brain
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