Paul Ceruzzi, age 10, of Easton, Conn*$ for his question:

What is the platypus family of animals?

If we did not know better, we might think that the duckbill platypus is made from pieces left over from other animals. He has the fur coat of an otter and the webbed feet of a goose. He has the bill of a duck and a tail very much like that of a beaver. The mother platypus lays eggs like those of a snake and, like a cat, feeds her babies on mother s milk. All this confusions however, did not stump the scientists. They have studied and classified him, placed him in an order and given him a family with its own scientific name.

Can you guess at this point how the fur coated, web .footed, egg laying, flat tailed creature is classified? Is he grouped with the birds, with the snakes or with the mammals? His scientific name is Ornithorhynchus, meaning bird snout. The word platypus means wide footed. He shares the order Monotremata with the five toed spiny anteater, who is a marsupial. And this may give us a clue,

The marsupials are the pouched animals   the kangaroos, the koalas the wallabies and our own strange little opossum. The small and helpless babies are carried in mothers pouch and fed on mothers milk. This makes them mammals. Since the platypus is in the same order with a marsupial animal„ it too must be a mammal,

Actually, the platypus and the spiny anteater are rated as the most primitive of all mammals. They may very well tell us what the very first mammals were like. These mammal ancestors were closely related to the reptiles and through the reptiles to the birds. Now we see why the platypus has features from both the reptiles and the birds. In the dim past, these animal groups were closely related,

    In most parts of the world, the mammals and the birds branched out and  became very different from          their ancestors. The platypus did not change, perhaps because there was no reason to change„

The strange platypus lives in Australia and the nearby islands, a world in which there are many, many marsupial animals, Here there were no big meat eaters with tooth and claw to threaten these harmless animals, In the rest of the world$ the primitive mammals had to keep on improving or perish, The primitive mammals of Australia were not threatened and so remained like their ancestors,

The furry platypus spends his life in and around the water. His burrow is in the muddy banks of a stream. Here Mrs. Platypus lays her white, soft shelled eggs, She then seals the door of the burrow and waits. The eggs are about the size of pigeon eggs, round and white. For nine or ten days she holds them tenderly in her arms with her whole body wrapped around them in a warm, furry ball. When the tiny babies arrive they are fed on mother’s milk.