The platypus may be my favorite animal in the world. The animal that wasn’t supposed to exist. When the first specimens were sent to Europe in the 19th century, scientists suspected a hoax.
The platypus is a link between the world of reptiles and our own mammalian world, with characteristics of both. It has a bill and webbed feet like a duck, lays eggs like a bird or reptile but also produces milk and has a coat of fur like a mammal. The platypus lacks nipples; the young nurse through the abdominal skin, so I guess we won’t see any platypus centerfolds. 
A team of scientest, lead by Wesley C. Warren, a geneticist at Washington University, has mapped the genome of the platypus, which contains approximately 18,500 genes.
The platypus shares 82 percent of its genes with the human, mouse, dog, opossum and chicken. That’s right, the platypus is 82% human and we are 82% platypus.
Something we need to keep reminding ourselves of is how much we share with the other animals that populate our planet. Just as we should remember how much we humans are alike no matter how different we may seem to be to the naked eye.
The platypus genome represents a look back in time to when mammals split from reptiles, some 166 million years ago. The more we learn about the genes that we share with these creatures the more we learn about ourselves and the better we understand the world we live in.
Personally I love the idea that I am 82% platypus.
An article on the project on the New York Times site:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/08/science/08platypus.html
What is your favorite animal, besides dogs, cats and horses named Amos, [Papa - ]
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May 8, 2008 at 7:48 am
Robert
I’ve always felt a certain kinship with the platypus…
We both don’t fit completely anywhere!
Noble and honorable platypus…i knew we were more related!
R.
May 8, 2008 at 9:06 am
Indian Lake Papa
Very funny about Amos! ha! Actually we get to see a lot of Manatee’s in FL. I think they are very special animals. Friendly to humans but humans (speed boats) have been tough on them. I’d like to hear what you could find out about Manatee’s! By the way I think your “‘philosphical” side of your brain must be where those 82% platypus genes reside!!ha!
May 8, 2008 at 10:34 am
tam
I love Squirrels! They’re cute, fluffy and so figgity! They crack me up!
One year when we were vacationing in Eastern Oregon my daughter and sister in law actually got squirrels to come up to them, some on their laps, and eat chips! Amazing!! i’ll find pics and email them to you.
May 8, 2008 at 3:57 pm
edfromct
Papa, some people think I am as strange as a platypus and some of my bosses at work have accused me of being as slowing moving as a manatee.
I did some research on manatees. They are surely among the least aggressive and gentlest of animals. Up to 10 feet long and 1,200 lbs they can eat 100 lbs of plants a day. I thought they only eat plants but apparently they have been know to eat small fish from nets. They can live up to 60 years.
Manatees are lot more intelligent than I thought, from Wikipedia:
“Manatees are capable of understanding discrimination tasks, and show signs of complex associated learning and advanced long term memory. They demonstrate complex discrimination and task-learning similar to dolphins and pinnipeds in acoustic and visual studies.”
Also although they swim along at 3 to 5 mph they can get up to 20 mph in short burst.
It is very hard to get an accurate count of these animals and their population in Florida is somewhere between 1,000 and 3,000. In 2006 there were 300 confirmed deaths from human activity, mostly from boat strikes. Also in 2006 the Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission downgraded their protection status from “endangered” to “threatened”. The fossil record indicates that have been in Florida for some 45 million years. How much longer they can last is an open question.
May 8, 2008 at 4:12 pm
edfromct
Tam, watching the squirrels, birds and other backyard animals can be as entertaining as a tv show.
My step-mother left peanuts out for the squirrels. There was a Cardinal that seemed one step ahead of the squirrels in getting the peanuts. My step-mother would try to put the peanuts where only squirrels could get them, like under a dust pan. The Cardinal would always figure out how to get at the nuts.
One of the funniest things I saw was in the Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. The squirrels had no fear of people and would just hop up looking for a hand out. I watched a young couple sit down at a park bench. The man went to get something. A squirrel hop up on the bench and walked over to the women. It seemed to reach out and touch her skirt and she completely freaked out. I am sure it was a lot funnier to me than to the poor women.
In my cousin’s backyard there is a woodchuck that will come up and take food from her hand. It will walk, well waddle
, up to me but I have to put food on the ground, it won’t take it from my hand.
May 9, 2008 at 3:20 pm
alece
i can do an incredible impression of a duck-billed platypus.
but very few have been lucky enough to see it.
(umm… i think i need your help over on my “puppy love” blog!)
May 9, 2008 at 4:16 pm
Deborah
Ed, our son did his 6th grade report/presentation on the Platypus…He made a cast of a foot and gave quite the report. I think you and he would get along very well……lol I wish I knew how to transfer it to you, you’d get a kick out of it!
May 12, 2008 at 1:14 am
lovewillbringustogether
Platypussi Rule! ( Ok - so the plural is platypi or -puses but platypussi sounds cuter)
I dare anyone to hold one of these creatres (you’ll probably have to come to my place to do so
) and not fall in love with them.
A word of caution concerning the Genetics we ’share’ though (Maths is one of my idiosyncrasy’s)
It may certainly be true that 82% of a platypus’s genes are ’shared’ with humans but that does not mean the reverse its true.
This is because animals have different numbers of genes (platyppi around 18,500 Humans 20-25,000 - strange we believe we have ‘mapped’ the Human Genome and yet we still don’t know exactly how many genes we have??)
That is not to diminish the fact that we share a deal of similar genes ( inherited molecular coded information packages) which is anamazing thought all of itself
It is risky though to state that ‘we’ are 82% (or whatever the number would equate to in our individual case) platypus since the number of genes refers to less than 2% of our DNA and science for all it’s proud boasts has not figured out what, if any, roles the remaining 98% of our DNA has in making us the unique creations we are.
it is not god logic ( or good logic either !
) to say that beacuse something is like a certain amount of a second something that the 2nd something must be the same amount like the first 
Thank you for posting about such a wonderful example of God’s handiwork that helps us to understand that things are not always the way mankind believes they are or should be.
<B
May 12, 2008 at 1:10 pm
edfromct
Hi Love, I have never seen a live Platypus so I guess I would have to come Australia to have that honor. As I understand it there are not many zoos outside of your country that have them on exhibit.
I would much rather see animals in the “wild” but the wild seems to be disappearing all to quickly.
At least got the sharing concept right, between all the creatures that inhabit our world, even if I got my sums all wrong.
I guess I have to do my homework on genes and DNA. I have read some recent stories about the mapping of the human genome but can’t say I have other than a very general understanding of the subject. As with all of science it is hard me to keep up with the most current information. The numbers I see also make it difficult for me to comprehend. With the human genome having something like 3 billion “base pairs” made of the 20,000+ “protein coding genes” then we have RNA, “regulatory proteins” and “introns”. Makes my head get a bit wobbly trying to take it all in.