BEWARE THE MIGHTY POISONOUS DUCK-BILLED PLATYPUS!!!!!!!
>>70230Winner of the "Most Bizarre Mammal" award for the past few million years running, no?
Peekaboo cat is not impressed.
so platypus is definitely a mammal? no asterisk or anything about it?
>>71281The platypus is nature's prank on biologists.
>>71281Most definitely. It may be primitive in a lot of ways, but it does have mammary glands.
>>71284Funny you should say that. One time a friend of mine asked me if chickens had nipples. Her and her friend both swore they did. It took me a good 10-15 minutes to convince them that mammary glands are a strictly mammalian thing.I theorize (they wouldn't tell me if this was true) that because a part of chicken is called the breast they then assumed breasts had nipples.I got many lulz at their expense though it was quality.
The platypus and echidnea are "monotremes." Monotremes are kind of "proto-mammals" and lack a number of mammal traits ... like nipples. However, they are included in the class "Mammalia" so get the check-mark as mammals.
>>71327Demmit, you got to it before I did.
Unrelated; but in my primary school the majority of my class was against me, because I claimed that you cannot hold your breath until you die.:/
>>71348That's true! You pass out, and you need to be conscious to hold your breath. Dur!
but they lay eggs! Mammals lay eggs?!
>>71376Advanced mammals (marsupials and placentals) are some of the few groups of animals that have completely given up laying eggs. Laying eggs is the primitive condition for all land vertebrates.
They're monotremes. Technically.
>>71426Montremes are mammals. By definition.