O Platypus! My Platypus!

by Richard Peacock

This week's Multiverse focuses on one of the strangest (and also cutest) freak of nature: the duck-billed platypus. It lays eggs, has one tube for both urine and feces, and is one of the only mammals to have venom glands. Also, no nipples. It just sort of oozes milk through its skin. Actually, it's a pretty gross animal. Enjoy!

"O Platypus! My Platypus!"

O platypus! My platypus! Your bill so flat and rubbery,
How you spend your days in waterways, and make your nests from shrubbery!
And yet I hear from biologists near that you're not like other mammals.
You still lay eggs, have venomous spurs, and don't have any nipples!
But O, milk! Milk! Milk!
O, how you feed your young!
How you secrete milk through you skin,
Which they lap up on their tongue.



O platypus! My platypus! Some even thought you were a fraud
When you were first discovered and taken home abroad.
Your duck-billed, beaver-tailed, otter-footed frame
Looked like pieces sewn together for some fantastic claim.
But platypus! Dear friend!
Though at first you seemed a lie,
You're now Australia's famed mascot,
You've caught every Aussie's eye!



My platypus does not answer, he has no lips to speak.
And though it looks just like a duck's, he does not have a beak.
The bill is used to hunt for prey in riverbeds and streams,
By detecting faint electrical blips as on a radar screen.
Exault! O, monotremes!
(The type of mammal you are).
Your native son has brought a smile
To biologists near and far.

The Multiverse is written by Richard Peacock, who generally doesn't know what he's talking about, and will gladly sacrifice scientific accuracy for the sake of a rhyme. Send rhyming complaints to richard@amateurscientist.org