Platypus

“ But the most interesting figure is near the centre of the right-hand half of the picture; the creature it most resembles is the duck-billed platypus. The “duck-bill” is very conspicuous, whilst the head, the plump body, and the stumpy tail all agree with the appearance of the platypus, even to the claws, which are clearly seen on the right hind leg. It is, of course, possible that the carving was intended to stand for a native “hedge-hog” or Echidna, but the former explanation would seem more true to Nature. ”

“ There were not wanting scientific men who regarded the Platypus of Australia, when first sent to Europe, as an ingenious example of Eastern skill, in which an animal had been compounded artificially by blending the beak of a Bird with the body of a Mammal. Fuller knowledge of that remarkable animal has continuously intensified wonder at its combination of Mammal, Bird, and Reptile in a single animal. ”

“ The platypus is aquatic in its habits, passing most of its time in the water or close to the margin of lakes and streams, swimming and diving with the greatest ease, and forming for the purpose of sleeping and breeding deep burrows in the banks, which generally have two orifices, one just above the water level, concealed among long grass and leaves, and the other below the surface. ”

“ The platypus is found in Tasmania and in the south and eastern districts of Australia only, being altogether unknown in the west and north. Being especially shy and retiring, and to a large extent nocturnal in its habits, it is not frequently seen even in districts where it may be rather abundant. The animal excavates burrows of so great a length as from thirty to fifty feet in the river-banks that it frequents, and at the extreme end of these burrows it constructs a loose nest of weeds and root-fibres, which it uses as its retreat, and also for the production of its eggs and young. ”

“ An animal which possesses some of the features of the hedgehog of old England, and resembles in others that distinctly Australian paradox, the platypus, which has a mouth which it cannot open—a mere tube through which the tongue is thrust, which in the production of its young combines the hatching of an egg as of a bird, with the suckling of a mammal, and which also has some of the characteristics of a reptile, cannot fail to be an interesting object to every student of the marvels of Nature. ”

“ First of all, the sight of it makes me so uncomfortable, that I want to hop away the instant I set eyes upon it. Then, too, it's so difficult to be polite to the Platypus, because one never knows how to behave towards it. If you treat it as an animal, you offend its bird nature, and if you treat it as a bird, the animal in it is mighty indignant. One never knows where one is with a creature that is two creatures," said the Kangaroo. ”

“ Two eggs are produced at a time, each measuring about three-fourths of an inch in its long and half an inch in its short axis, and enclosed in a strong, flexible, white shell.
The platypus is pretty generally distributed in situations suitable to its aquatic habits throughout the island of Tasmania and the southern and eastern portions of Australia.
The length of the animal when full grown is from 18 to 20 in. from the extremity of the beak to the end of the tail, the male being slightly larger than the female. ”

“ The premaxillae show traces of the same divergence followed by convergence of their ends that is seen in the Platypus. There are only sixteen pairs of ribs, and either three or four lumbar vertebrae. Echidna has no trace of teeth, and there are no horny pads which take their place; the mouth is as edentulous as in the true American Anteaters. The brain (Fig. 53) is marked by sulci, contrary to what we find in Ornithorhynchus. The genus has been divided into three species, but it is doubtful whether more than one can be allowed, which ranges from Australia through the Papuan region. ”

“ Another group of mammals is made up of two genera only—the duck-billed platypus, or Ornithorhynchus, and the Echidna, two most interesting forms, but which cannot be further noticed here. They form, by themselves, a theme amply sufficient for an article, or even half a dozen articles. ”

“ The development of the babies is wonderful to witness. They grow a coat of soft dark brown fur, which in due time is protected by an outer coat of stiff, dark, wiry hair. For a time the bill of the Platypus is armed with teeth of a very peculiar shape, found in no other animal. The skin around and under the teeth rapidly hardens until it becomes a horny-like substance, by which time the roots are absorbed and the crowns are shed. ”

“ FOR many years it was reported by the natives of Australia that the extraordinary warm-blooded quadruped known to naturalists as the duckbill, or platypus, produced its young from eggs laid in a burrow by the female. That a mammal—and a mammal, although of an altogether peculiar and out of the way type, the creature undoubtedly is—should lay eggs was, however, too much for the minds of stay-at-home naturalists, and the fiat accordingly went forth that the native story was to be discredited. And discredited it therefore was. In nature, as in other things, truth will, however, ultimately prevail ”

“ It swims and dives easily and its major food consists of worms and other aquatic animals found in the mud or gravel at the bottom. It has cheek pouches like a squirrel. When it comes up from a dive these pouches are stuffed with the food it has gathered, which is extracted and eaten at leisure.
Adult animals are toothless but in each jaw there is a horny ridge. The young, however, have rootless teeth—a possible clue to their very remote ancestry. Like a bird the platypus has a very small head. There is no division of its brain into two hemispheres, as in all other mammals and most birds. ”

“ John Bulmer by the natives of Lake Tyers, Gippsland:—
Bärlijan or Platypus.
The platypus lives in the water; he makes holes under the banks of the rivers. A good many live in one place; they have plenty of young ones in their holes: never saw any eggs, only young ones. It has young ones about spring-time: never saw him feed his young. It makes its nest of weed out of the water. It is very good to eat: plenty of fat. It has Gola Koo-yun or spur on its hind foot, which it sticks into any one: makes hand belonging to blackfellow swell very much. The platypus is not very big ”

“ It is worth while noting, too, that the links which bind the birds to the reptiles bind them also in part to the lower mammals. For the lowest existing mammal is that curious Australian creature known to the rough-and-ready classification of the colonists as the water-mole, and rejoicing in the various scientific aliases of the ornithorhynchus and the duck-billed platypus. ”

“ They are at least not lower than some that still exist, and not so low as those lowest of mammals in Modern Australia, the duck-billed platypus and the echidna. Owen further supposes that they were possibly the first mammals, and not only the predecessors but the progenitors of the modern marsupials. ”

“ Take, for [263] example, that curious anomaly, the mud-fish of the Gambia, Lepidosiren, referred to in the last chapter, and which, to look at, is as much like a lizard as a fish, with its four singular appendages where either legs or fins might be. Again, we have that paradox in nature—bird, reptile, and quadruped combined—in the Australian Platypus, a semi-aquatic animal. ‘These two fresh-water animals are,’ says Darwin, ‘among the most anomalous forms now found in the world ”

“ Fig. 652.—Second larva of Platygaster: œ, œsophagus; ng, brain; n, nervous cord; ga and g, genital organs; ms, muscular band.
The spindle-shaped larva in its first stage roughly resembles a trochosphere of a worm rather than the larva of an insect so high in the scale as a Hymenopter. It is active, but after moulting the second larva is oval, still without segments. Dr. Ayers gives a profusion of details and figures of the first and second stages of our Teleas, the second strongly resembling the Cyclops stage of Ganin. ”

“ Of the beautiful Australian genus Platycercus, P. elegans, also found in Norfolk Island, may serve as an example: it is crimson-red with black on the dorsal feathers; the cheeks, bend of the wing, {368}primary-coverts, outer webs of quills and the tail being blue. The dozen species haunt grassy hills, feed upon seeds, berries, insects and their larvae, run easily, take short flights, rise with outspread tail, and lay from four to seven eggs in holes in trees without a nest. ”

“ One species, however, Distira semperi, is confined to the landlocked freshwater Lake Taal at Luzon in the Philippines. Sea-snakes are viviparous and pass their whole life in the water; they soon die when brought on shore. The scales are very small, often very much reduced, and there are frequently no enlarged ventrals on the compressed belly, but Platurus has broad ventrals. Their motions in the water are almost as rapid as they are uncertain and awkward when the animals are removed out of their proper element. Their nostrils are placed quite at the top of the snout. ”

“ Limbs with fine reticulations, inner digits of forelimb with reduced pigmentation. Ventral surfaces off-white, immaculate.
Comparisons. D. platyurus is readily distinguished from D. conspicillatus, D. laevis, D. hillii, D. bilybarasp. nov.,D. custossp. nov. and D. barraganaesp. nov. by the condition of the 1st supralabial (small and not differentiated from the rest of the supralabial row in D. platyurus vs greatly enlarged and contacting ventral edge of nasal scale) and by the absence of a well-defined canthal stripe (vs canthal stripe well-developed) .
Distribution and Ecology. ”

“ The skull of the Placodontia is almost unique among reptiles for the extraordinary development of large, flat, crushing teeth upon the jaws and palatines, in Placodus as few as twenty all told, in Placochelys still fewer. In consequence, the palatines are very large, meeting each other throughout as do the pterygoids in the median line. The ectopterygoids are very small and the pterygoids are restricted to the posterior part of the palate, widely separated from the prevomers. ”

“ The fins are usually much developed, particularly the dorsal and anal, the former of which sometimes terminates in one or more free filaments of great length and slenderness, as in the genera Heniochus and Zanclus, for example. In the genus Psettus, the body is so drawn out above and below, and the dorsal and anal fins are so pointed and hooked, that the fish when laid on its side, bears no slight resemblance to the figure of a bat with expanded wings. Platax has these fins still more enormously lengthened and pointed, as are, in this genus, the ventrals also. ”

“ The “Cat-fishes” of North America, of which about a dozen different species are known. One species occurs in China. Allied, but smaller forms are Hopladelus and Noturus, likewise from North America.
c. Pimelodina.
Platystoma.—Adipose fin of moderate length; a short dorsal fin with a pungent spine and six or seven soft rays; anal fin rather short. Snout very long, spatulate, with the upper jaw more or less projecting; the upper surface of the head not covered by the skin. Barbels six; the anterior and posterior nostrils remote from each other, none with a barbel. Palate toothed. Caudal forked ”

“ I allude particularly to the decided mark of white at the base of the primaries and secondaries, and to the white mark on the under-coverts of the wing: it is true that in the youthful state of most of the other Platycerci the same parts have a faint mark of white, but it is thrown off as the bird approaches maturity, and is never so distinct as in the specimen here figured. As I have mentioned above, only one specimen has yet been seen; future research will doubtless lead to the discovery of others, until when its specific value must remain a matter of uncertainty. ”

“ This beautiful Platycercus is a native of South Australia, and from the circumstance of my having procured some of my finest specimens in the very streets of that embryo city, I have been induced to give it the specific name of Adelaidiæ. In all probability the bird may in a few years be looked for in vain in the suburbs of this rapidly increasing settlement, as it is too large a species and possesses too many attractions to remain unmolested; indeed it is even now much persecuted and destroyed by the newly-arrived emigrants, who kill it either for mere sport or for the table ”

“ Though not sea-serpents, we have introduced them here because they flourished at the same time, and lived in the same seas with the Mosasaurs and other forms of that group. The very large teeth, with strongly marked ridges, of the Polyptychodon are abundant in the Cambridge Greensand that underlies the chalk, and represent a very huge animal.
In our illustration, Plate XIII., the artist has represented the Elasmosaurus [37] (of Cope) with its long thin neck stretched out in search of food on the bed of the sea. ”

“ W. Theobald makes out as many as twenty-five inhabiting the Bay of Bengal and the adjacent seas, to which area this group of Reptiles is mainly confined, a few species extending to northern Australia, and one, the most emphatically pelagic, the Pelamis bicolor, even to the Pacific Ocean. One genus only, Platurus, approaches the Land Snakes in several of its characters; having much the physiognomy of an Elaps, with the cleft of the mouth not turned upwards behind, as in other Sea Snakes; the eye also is rather small, nor is the tail at all prehensile. ”