The Platypus: The Animal That Baffled Scientists

With its furry skin and its bill that greatly resembles that of a duck’s beak, not to mention that it lays eggs much like other birds, one would really have a hard time classifying the platypus. Is it a bird, or is it a mammal? Throughout many decades, scientists have been really puzzled by these strange creatures, with the taxonomists taking over eight decades just to decide if they were mammals or birds.

The platypus was first described in literature by George Shaw in the British Museum, who, along with many of his contemporaries, suspected it was a hoax. Most early scientists correctly assumed it was a mammal based on its fur, but working only from skins they knew nothing else. The dried bill strongly resembled an actual duck beak, and its first Latin name was Platypus anatinus: the flat foot duck. The name stuck even though these creatures were renamed Ornithorhynchus anatinus, which, for the record, means duck-like bird snout.

The more nineteenth century biologists learned about platypuses, the more confused they became.

Learn more about these strange mammals over at JSTOR Daily.

(Image Credit: Stefan Heinrich/ Wikimedia Commons)