Spyke
thelemmy.club

As a platypus lays eggs and produces milk, it’s the only animal that can make its own custard.

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dustycupsreply
aussie.zone

And echidnas.

I'm not sure if I'm and echidna custard or platypus custard kind of person.

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DJDarrenreply
thelemmy.club

DM me your card details and I’ll send you a couple of pints from my platypus farm.

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Minarblereply
aussie.zone

It’s heavily regulated now as someone sold one of the male drumsticks that still had the venomous spur attached at a Saturday farmers market.

Fortunately most of the venom was deactivated by frying it but they still had to be hospitalised for a week.

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FuglyDuckreply
lemmy.world

I wonder how they'd be for pets.

I realize I shouldn't.

but. I kinda want one. They're cute.

(again, I realize I shouldn't!)

12

Hell, we'll even try to domesticate things that are anything but cute, like crocodiles, fish and spiders

3

A full English breakfast ain’t shit once you’ve had the full platypus breakfast!

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lemmy.world

Also well known for foiling evil plots while wearing a fedora.

133

If something is too weird, some of the oddities tend to get overlooked.

58

Stomachs aren't necessary... You can jump straight to the large intestine. Even humans can survive like that

Obviously, they're useful. It's another stage of digestion, which means more energy and nutrients are extracted from your food. It widens your viable food sources, just like chewing does

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stangelreply
lemmy.world

Platypus have been around for over 110 million years. Nothing broken about that build!

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lemmy.world

"broken build" here likely refers to the phrase as defined by gamers to function as synonymous to "overpowered".

As in, "the build is so broken you can't/it is difficult to play against it". This phraseology could be used by either an ally or an enemy, but it contextually changes connotation from positive for allies to negative for enemies.

Build is often used as a shorthand for a character's combination of items, skills, and levels (as the various games define it).

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stangelreply
lemmy.world

Thanks, I (mis-?) interpreted it as a gamers build that doesn't work because they spread abilities rather than min-maxing.

7

It's an odd one. At a guess, the idea is that the build is so good / powerful that it breaks the game (or, indeed, the meta) for everyone else.

3

So they were created about the same time as dinosaurs and flowers? Evolution was feeling really creative at that part of Cretaceous.

1

After the platypus, evolution started looking into input validation.

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lemmy.world

If I remember correctly, they don't have mammalian glands and instead "sweat" thier milk for thier young.

45

The UV light thing wasn't discovered (or at least published) until 2020.
Phineas and Ferb ended in 2015.

86
lemmy.blahaj.zone

They also don't have nipples (though do have mammary glands) and mother platypuses basically sweat milk through their skin for the pups to collect off their fur

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feddit.it

The milk pools in grooves on the mother's abdomen, allowing the young to lap it up.

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So I guess that's partly why most mammals' milk glands are in the abdomen. Other than primates, I only know that elephants also have mammaries on the breasts

2

You got an ancestor that did that too. Part of why platypuses are so damn weird is because mammalian ancestors kept facing evolutionary bottlenecks. Platypuses are more like proto mammals than us placentals

6

It is worth mentioning that when the first stuffed sample of platypus was sent to Britain, the scientists thought it is a joke.

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lemmy.world

And some of those same scientists later organized a mass slaughter of thousands of platypuses in order to determine if the stories about them were true. Science, bitches!

10

https://platypus.asn.au/platypus-myths/

The fact is that the platypus’s digestive tract does include a small expanded pouch-like section where one would normally expect a stomach to be located. The platypus’s stomach doesn’t secrete digestive acids or enzymes (Harrop and Hume 1980; Ordoñez et al. 2008), but does produce a mucus-rich fluid to assist nutrient absorption in the intestines (Krause 1971). Following on from the discussion of grinding pads above, it would seem that a platypus masticates food so thoroughly in its mouth that little additional processing is required before food reaches the intestines. Also, because a platypus consumes numerous small prey items over a period of many hours, its stomach doesn’t need to have a large holding capacity to accommodate infrequent large meals.

Sooo, "gullet"?

30

A pseudo-stomach? IDK...

I think since it's using bacteria and not acid, it's not a "stomach", just performs the same type of function.

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Yes, platypuses lost their stomach during evolution, so they basically grind food using gravel and their beak before sending it to the intestine, which has taken on some of the functions performed by stomachs in other animals. Source

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lemmy.world

Like the universe got lazy and hit the "Randomize for me" button instead LMAO

47

Will Wright took one look at this thing in an encyclopedia in 2001 and immediately started planning Spore.

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lemmy.world

Seeing living platypus is high on my bucket list, I'm still not convinced it's not a hoax

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explodiclereply
sh.itjust.works

You can just go see one at the zoo; they're usually with the marsupials and chupacabras.

20

You're very unlikely to see one in the wild, they're nocturnal and their burrow entries are under creek banks

In zoos they live in the nocturnal animal section, probably swimming

2
aussie.zone

You don’t see them though. The national park boards say “look for ripples in the water!”.

If you see ripples, you’re about to die.

10

Well, if you live in Australia, you're about to die... So many deadly things always just round the corner, or under the seat!

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programming.dev

If you see ripples, you’re about to die.

Yeah, but from which threat? Snake? Spider? Swimming kangaroo?

2

I meant the platypusses, but legit the number of times I’ve just been walking along a path and a snake has started thrashing around in the long grass next to me. All the snakes here are dead-in-eight-minutes type snakes.

2

I would rather Australian risks than those of bears and big cats

Aussie snakes try to keep away from people, they aren't aggressive.

Our spiders are so like those elsewhere (compare Redback to black widow)

You're unlikely to see a kangaroo in water. If you do, keep away from it just like you keep away from wild animals anyway

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feeblreply
feddit.nl

I wish we could go back to that era of memes.

8

And Dan Povenmire was the first to discover the florescence. People Perry the platypus was more scientifically accurate than you thought.

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When you cheat and choose all the perks in the character creator.

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lemmy.autism.place

It's a Pokémon. And so far, the only one with at least 4 types: water, poison, flying and electric. How the fuck can you even counter it?

22

Got a 2x weakness to electric and psychic or a 4x to smackdown>earthquake

7

I'm curious now how a mammal develops in an external egg. The process seems so weird.

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FuglyDuckreply
lemmy.world

Just the males, iirc.

They have venomous spurs in their hind feet used in chasing off other males.

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Instigatereply
aussie.zone

And their venom HURTS. They’re not particularly deadly or anything but their venom will land you in the hospital or at least laid up in bed for a while. My stepmother grew up out in the bush in NSW the ‘70s and received one of the few recorded platypus envenomations and she described it as the most painful experience of her life. She said childbirth was a breeze compared to the platypus sting!

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I guess they subscribe to the "if they're still alive, they'll tell others how much it sucked, and we'll be bothered less." theory.

10

They also have spikes in their hind legs that they use to deliver an extremely painful venom that can paralyze small animals.

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I'd like to be, oooohhhh my favorite animal

I want to be, oooohhhh my favorite animal

I'd be a platypus, for you

16

May they said it "twice" because they actually fluoresce under green light as well?

/s

3