While both male and female platypuses are born with ankle spurs, only the males spurs produce venom. Whatever the reason may be, we have to stomach the fact that platypuses and echidnas can thrive without these acid-secreting digestive organs. feet, to protect the webbing between the toes. This rendered the stomach acids useless, and they similarly did not need stomachs anymore. Weirdness aside, platypuses are remarkable. While people familiar in passing with the platypus often cite its awkward 'duck-billed' appearance as its most eminent trait, or take note of how the platypus lays eggs, a lesser-known characteristic of platypuses is that they are one of the few mammals that. All of them are prolific eaters, eating at least a quarter of their body weight every day. The platypus is a truly unusual creature in multiple ways, one of many storied and whimsical-looking animals originating in Australia. Females use their bodies and their tails to maintain a perfect incubation temperature for the eggs in any weather. The platypus is a monotreme, an egg-laying mammal, found only in Australia. The male platypus can deliver venom through a spur on its. Meanwhile, others contended that platypuses ate a lot of acid-neutralizing compounds such as the calcium carbonate in shellfish. Males have a venomous spur in their hind legs that they use to fight other males. Its front webbed feet expertly paddle through the cold waters, while the hind feet and tail steer. Some experts suggest that these species had diets that simply did not need the help of enzymes to break them down. While most jawed vertebrates evolved with stomachs, platypuses, echidnas, and many species of fish lost their stomachs through their evolutionary history.Īt some point in time, platypuses and other stomach-less species moved past the need for stomachs, but the reason remains unclear. The spur is used in defence and against other males in.

One last peculiarity of the platypus is the sharp horny spur on the back feet of the males, through which poison from a poison inside the leg can be injected with a slashing kick. Surprisingly, other monotremes such as the echidnas don’t have them either. The back legs of a male platypus provide defense against predators and other males via poisonous spurs. If you’re looking for bizarre platypus facts, here’s one for you: they don’t have stomachs. The duckbill platypus has been called a lot of things since it arrived on the zoological scene in 1798. In adult male, venomous spur present on hind ankles (Grant 2015) Also see Spurs and venom in Sexual Dimorphism Also see Spurs and venom in Other Physical and Physiological Characteristics Feet.

Platypus feet venom spur