GOLDEN VALLEY, Minn. — The PLATYPUS - an egg laying mammal with a duck bill- oh, and did you know the males have a venomous claw!? The venom could offer a cure to diabetes and there are antibodies in platypus milk!
They're one of the few of its kind left and they offer clues to how mammals, reptiles and birds split hundreds of millions of years ago.
The platypus is very shy, nocturnal and lives in eastern Australia’s rivers and lakes. Because they’re so elusive, most Australians took them for granted but a recent study shows that perhaps we’ve lost as much as half of the population due to habitat loss and fragmentation. Understanding the problem now could help us to protect them in the future.
