The platypus has no outer ear lobe, and both its eyes and ears close when it dives. When digging a burrow or moving on land, platypuses can fold away their webbed foot extensions. The forelegs push the animal through the water while the hind legs trail behind, acting as stability rudders. With their slightly flattened, streamlined body and short, stout legs, they are well-adapted for swimming. This fur ranges in colour from grey to dark brown. Under their long, coarse outer hair is a fine, dense underfur which is woolly in texture. Platypuses are dark brown on their backs and generally light brown on their bellies. The average male platypus is about 50 centimetres long (head to tail) while females measure about 43 centimetres. Only further research can tell," Olson said.The platypus and two species of echidna are the world's only monotremes, or egg-laying mammals.Ībout half the size of a household cat, adult males and females can differ greatly in size and weight. "However, there is a possibility that the trait has little or no ecological function. "If there is an ecological function, it likely has to do with interactions between platypuses and other species," such as predators, Olson said in the email. Because they don't rely heavily on sight, it's possible that their biofluorescence is not used to communicate with each other, but to reduce their visibility to predators, as in the case in some biofluorescent crustaceans. Platypuses navigate their twilit, aquatic environments through mechanoreception, the detection of mechanical stimuli such as touch and sound, and electrostimulation, the perception of natural electrical signals. The greenish-bluish color displayed a similar pattern and intensity in the male and female platypuses, suggesting it isn't a sexual trait tied to reproduction, the researchers reported. It also glowed green in UV light.Ī male platypus (Ornithorhynchus anatinus) museum specimen (FMNH 16612) collected from Tasmania, Australia, photographed under visible light and ultraviolet (UV) light without and with a yellow camera lens filter. The scientists then tested a third specimen at the University of Nebraska State Museum in Lincoln, Nebraska that platypus, a male, had been collected in New South Wales, Australia. Both specimens - one male and one female - displayed the glow, according to the study. The discovery of platypuses' fluorescent glow came from two specimens from Tasmania, Australia, in the collection of The Field Museum in Chicago. When 19th-century Europeans first saw preserved skins of these strange-looking creatures, many experts thought the animal was a taxidermy hoax, with a duck's beak sewn to a mole's body, according to NHM. These oddball mammals have furry bodies flat and hairless beaver-like tails webbed feet (males also have spurs on their hind legs that are loaded with venom) and broad bills like a duck's. Platypuses are semiaquatic and live in eastern Australia, and they are such a peculiar hodgepodge of body parts that they seem cobbled together from unrelated animals so perhaps fittingly, their scientific name, Ornithorhynchus anatinus, means bird-snouted flat-foot, according to London's Natural History Museum (NHM). "We all agreed that we should explore this idea." "Plus, who doesn’t want to examine a platypus specimen?" he added. This made platypuses promising candidates for finding biofluorescence in monotremes, Olson told Live Science in an email. The researchers knew that platypuses - like flying squirrels - were active at night and during twilight, when an eerie glow would be visible. "We were preparing for our second day at the Field Museum in Chicago to document biofluorescence in New World flying squirrels, and I started wondering how broadly distributed this trait might be within the animal kingdom," said Erik Olson, co-author of the new study and an associate professor of natural resources at Northland College. While testing the flying squirrel museum specimens for signs of biofluorescence, they decided to look at other mammal species in the same collections too, according to a statement. Kohler, then an undergraduate at Northland College in Ashland, Wisconsin, and her colleagues reported their results on Jan. Study co-author Allison Kohler, a doctoral candidate in the Texas A&M University Wildlife and Fisheries Department in College Station, Texas, had previously tested museum specimens of flying squirrels and found that all three North American species - the northern flying squirrel ( Glaucomys sabrinus), the southern flying squirrel ( Glaucomys volans) and the Humboldt’s flying squirrel ( Glaucomys oregonensis) - glowed bright pink in UV light.
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