The platypus might be the strangest animal alive. It’s a mammal - warm-blooded, furry - but it lays eggs, which mammals are not supposed to do. It also doesn’t have nipples; instead, milk just oozes out of patches on the mother’s belly, and the babies lap it up like a puddle.
When a platypus dives to hunt, it closes its eyes, ears, and nostrils, so it can’t see, hear, or smell anything. Instead, it uses its rubbery bill as an electrical sensor, picking up the tiny electric signals given off by shrimp and worms as they move. It’s the only mammal that hunts this way.
And the males have a sharp, hollow spur on each back ankle that delivers a venom strong enough to leave a grown human in agony for weeks. The platypus has basically every superpower a mammal isn’t supposed to have.
