Shine On, You Crazy Duckbill
November 16, 2020 12:35 PM Subscribe
In addition to being a “duck-billed, beaver-tailed, otter-footed, egg-laying aquatic [venomous mammal]”, platypii are also bioluminescent! Vice, National Geographic, The New York Times, Phys.org, The Cut, and Science News have reportage on the forthcoming paper in Mammalia
"Do you think God ever gets stoned?....Just take a look at the platypus - I think so. 'I'll take a beaver, and put a duck's bill on it. It will be a mammal, but it will lay eggs. Hey Darwin, up yours!'" - Robin Williams
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 1:05 PM on November 16, 2020 [6 favorites]
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 1:05 PM on November 16, 2020 [6 favorites]
*fluorescent
Oh marsupials, shine on you crazy diamonds
posted by rubatan at 1:10 PM on November 16, 2020 [6 favorites]
Oh marsupials, shine on you crazy diamonds
posted by rubatan at 1:10 PM on November 16, 2020 [6 favorites]
Along with the news about puffin beaks fluorescing, this has been a heck of a week for "I had no idea they could glow" animal news.
A black light menagerie, as it were.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 1:17 PM on November 16, 2020 [6 favorites]
A black light menagerie, as it were.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 1:17 PM on November 16, 2020 [6 favorites]
Blenagerie
posted by Going To Maine at 1:42 PM on November 16, 2020 [4 favorites]
posted by Going To Maine at 1:42 PM on November 16, 2020 [4 favorites]
And if anyone here's a fan of Phineas and Ferb, the creator of said show (Dan Povenmire, who also voices the show's lead antagonist) is very aware of this discovery.
PeRRy the PlatyPUS?
posted by FritoKAL at 1:53 PM on November 16, 2020 [4 favorites]
PeRRy the PlatyPUS?
posted by FritoKAL at 1:53 PM on November 16, 2020 [4 favorites]
Oh marsupials, shine on you crazy diamonds
*Monotremes. Marsupials got nothing like this.
posted by The Bellman at 1:53 PM on November 16, 2020 [5 favorites]
*Monotremes. Marsupials got nothing like this.
posted by The Bellman at 1:53 PM on November 16, 2020 [5 favorites]
This discovery adds evidence to my contention that platypuses are, in fact, made of motel bedspreads.
posted by sonascope at 2:27 PM on November 16, 2020 [4 favorites]
posted by sonascope at 2:27 PM on November 16, 2020 [4 favorites]
* Platypodes.
The name comes from the Greek platus (flat) and pous (foot). The most logical pluralisation would therefore be platypodes. Given that the word is loaned into English, it'd also be acceptable to pluralise using common English patterns, giving platypuses.
But platypii is way out.
(See also octopodes/octopuses where, for the same reason, octopii is a pretty terrible attempt at a word.)
posted by avapoet at 2:32 PM on November 16, 2020 [5 favorites]
The name comes from the Greek platus (flat) and pous (foot). The most logical pluralisation would therefore be platypodes. Given that the word is loaned into English, it'd also be acceptable to pluralise using common English patterns, giving platypuses.
But platypii is way out.
(See also octopodes/octopuses where, for the same reason, octopii is a pretty terrible attempt at a word.)
posted by avapoet at 2:32 PM on November 16, 2020 [5 favorites]
It’s increasingly clear that these animals were generated with the random tables in the back of the 1st edition Dungeon Master’s Guide.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 2:36 PM on November 16, 2020 [7 favorites]
posted by ricochet biscuit at 2:36 PM on November 16, 2020 [7 favorites]
TIL, male platypii are venemous.
What. The. Actual. F@%k???
posted by Thorzdad at 2:46 PM on November 16, 2020
What. The. Actual. F@%k???
posted by Thorzdad at 2:46 PM on November 16, 2020
Every year or so, I find out a new, totally bizarre factoid about the platypus. The previous one was that they track prey by detecting the electrical signals that make their muscles work. Next year I guess it'll be that they share a common hive-mind, or are big fans of shonen anime, or something.
posted by rifflesby at 2:59 PM on November 16, 2020 [13 favorites]
posted by rifflesby at 2:59 PM on November 16, 2020 [13 favorites]
In the absence of a Babel Fish, I am choosing to see this animal as a final and clinching proof of the non-existence of God.
hey, I'm RIGHT here
posted by babelfish at 3:15 PM on November 16, 2020 [13 favorites]
hey, I'm RIGHT here
posted by babelfish at 3:15 PM on November 16, 2020 [13 favorites]
oh god
posted by Greg_Ace at 3:29 PM on November 16, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by Greg_Ace at 3:29 PM on November 16, 2020 [1 favorite]
I liked how the researchers’ first step in investigating these kinds of things is to first see if the ones stored in the closet or wherever at the museum luminesce. Please check everything!!!!
posted by Tandem Affinity at 8:27 PM on November 16, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by Tandem Affinity at 8:27 PM on November 16, 2020 [1 favorite]
The New York Times headline was amusing:
> "Platypuses Glow Under Blacklight. We Have No Idea Why.
> "What other secrets are they hiding?"
yesss, platypus seeecrets
posted by Pronoiac at 8:57 PM on November 16, 2020 [2 favorites]
> "Platypuses Glow Under Blacklight. We Have No Idea Why.
> "What other secrets are they hiding?"
yesss, platypus seeecrets
posted by Pronoiac at 8:57 PM on November 16, 2020 [2 favorites]
"Do you think God ever gets stoned?....Just take a look at the platypus - I think so. 'I'll take a beaver, and put a duck's bill on it. It will be a mammal, but it will lay eggs. Hey Darwin, up yours!'" - Robin Williams
posted by EmpressCallipygos
>Oh marsupials, shine on you crazy diamonds
*Monotremes. Marsupials got nothing like this.
posted by The Bellman
Monotremes also ooze their milk through a patch of skin, not through a dedicated nipple. There is no spout on these critters, just a puddle.
----------------
TIL, male platypii are venemous.
What. The. Actual. F@%k???
posted by Thorzdad
And you really really really don't want a dose of it.
"Although powerful enough to paralyse smaller animals, the venom is not lethal to humans. However, it produces excruciating pain that may be intense enough to incapacitate the victim. Swelling rapidly develops around the entry wound and gradually spreads outward. Information obtained from case studies shows that the pain develops into a long-lasting hyperalgesia that can persist for months but usually lasts from a few days to a few weeks. A clinical report from 1992 showed that the severe pain was persistent and did not respond to morphine."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platypus_venom
posted by Pouteria at 10:31 PM on November 16, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by EmpressCallipygos
>Oh marsupials, shine on you crazy diamonds
*Monotremes. Marsupials got nothing like this.
posted by The Bellman
Monotremes also ooze their milk through a patch of skin, not through a dedicated nipple. There is no spout on these critters, just a puddle.
----------------
TIL, male platypii are venemous.
What. The. Actual. F@%k???
posted by Thorzdad
And you really really really don't want a dose of it.
"Although powerful enough to paralyse smaller animals, the venom is not lethal to humans. However, it produces excruciating pain that may be intense enough to incapacitate the victim. Swelling rapidly develops around the entry wound and gradually spreads outward. Information obtained from case studies shows that the pain develops into a long-lasting hyperalgesia that can persist for months but usually lasts from a few days to a few weeks. A clinical report from 1992 showed that the severe pain was persistent and did not respond to morphine."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platypus_venom
posted by Pouteria at 10:31 PM on November 16, 2020 [1 favorite]
So proud. I saw a platypus at a distance once in the wild and I'd love to see one again. They are apparently in one of the local creeks which is good news. I've seen them at Healsville Sanctuary and what surprised me was how small they are!
posted by freethefeet at 1:27 AM on November 17, 2020 [2 favorites]
posted by freethefeet at 1:27 AM on November 17, 2020 [2 favorites]
From the same Wikipedia article:
In 1991, Keith Payne, a former member of the Australian Army and recipient of the Victoria Cross (Australia's highest award for valour), was struck on the hand by a platypus spur while trying to rescue the stranded animal. He described the pain as worse than being struck by shrapnel. One month later, he was still experiencing pain in that hand. In 2006, Payne reported discomfort and stiffness when carrying out some physical activities, such as using a hammer.
That’s *fifteen years* later.
posted by nat at 1:27 AM on November 17, 2020 [3 favorites]
In 1991, Keith Payne, a former member of the Australian Army and recipient of the Victoria Cross (Australia's highest award for valour), was struck on the hand by a platypus spur while trying to rescue the stranded animal. He described the pain as worse than being struck by shrapnel. One month later, he was still experiencing pain in that hand. In 2006, Payne reported discomfort and stiffness when carrying out some physical activities, such as using a hammer.
That’s *fifteen years* later.
posted by nat at 1:27 AM on November 17, 2020 [3 favorites]
So we should just go through all the natural history museums with UV lights to check all the animals now right?
posted by Braeburn at 3:34 AM on November 17, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by Braeburn at 3:34 AM on November 17, 2020 [1 favorite]
Yes, it would have been platypodes, but that "platypuses" is just fine because this is English.
This "take a Latin-ish-sounding word and change the ending to ii" trend in English seems to start with the word radii, which is the plural of the second-declension Latin masculine radius. Were platypii also a second-declension Latin masculine plural, its singular would be platypius. But it's not, so this petty detail is a special case of pedantry without an audience to actually feel scolded by.
This kind of topic becomes a way of showing off education and snobbery, and I don't mean to say that any step of this is some kind of shameful mistake. After all, we've sort of come to expect as a culture that this is how you make the plural of words like "cactus" and "virus" and, well, "penis". So perhaps this will become the official spelling at some point, simply because it's common enough that we'll stop bothering each other about it and publications will adopt it as standard. That sort of thing is how we get a lot of the Proper Official Spellings in modern English, today!
But that also means you can relax. You don't need to remember that the plural of "cactus" is "cactus", that "virus" had no plural until we identified their individual objects in the 20th century, or that the Romans would have used the plural "penes". You can just chill out and write "cactuses", "viruses", and "penises" (just please, not in my yearbook: my mother goes through my shelves sometimes!).
But if you want to enjoy sounding all fun and fancy and Latin-y, you might like remembering that it's "cactus → cacti" not "cactius → cactii".
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 3:36 AM on November 17, 2020 [6 favorites]
This "take a Latin-ish-sounding word and change the ending to ii" trend in English seems to start with the word radii, which is the plural of the second-declension Latin masculine radius. Were platypii also a second-declension Latin masculine plural, its singular would be platypius. But it's not, so this petty detail is a special case of pedantry without an audience to actually feel scolded by.
This kind of topic becomes a way of showing off education and snobbery, and I don't mean to say that any step of this is some kind of shameful mistake. After all, we've sort of come to expect as a culture that this is how you make the plural of words like "cactus" and "virus" and, well, "penis". So perhaps this will become the official spelling at some point, simply because it's common enough that we'll stop bothering each other about it and publications will adopt it as standard. That sort of thing is how we get a lot of the Proper Official Spellings in modern English, today!
But that also means you can relax. You don't need to remember that the plural of "cactus" is "cactus", that "virus" had no plural until we identified their individual objects in the 20th century, or that the Romans would have used the plural "penes". You can just chill out and write "cactuses", "viruses", and "penises" (just please, not in my yearbook: my mother goes through my shelves sometimes!).
But if you want to enjoy sounding all fun and fancy and Latin-y, you might like remembering that it's "cactus → cacti" not "cactius → cactii".
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 3:36 AM on November 17, 2020 [6 favorites]
Monotremes also ooze their milk through a patch of skin, not through a dedicated nipple.
are you fucking with me
posted by medusa at 4:23 AM on November 17, 2020 [2 favorites]
are you fucking with me
posted by medusa at 4:23 AM on November 17, 2020 [2 favorites]
are you fucking with me
Nope.
"In fact, because monotremes lack nipples,...
Monotremes lactate from their mammary glands via openings in their skin, rather than through nipples."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monotreme
posted by Pouteria at 6:44 AM on November 17, 2020 [1 favorite]
Nope.
"In fact, because monotremes lack nipples,...
Monotremes lactate from their mammary glands via openings in their skin, rather than through nipples."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monotreme
posted by Pouteria at 6:44 AM on November 17, 2020 [1 favorite]
TIL, male platypii are venemous.
What. The. Actual. F@%k???
There’s a simple explanation: Australia
posted by aubilenon at 6:52 AM on November 17, 2020 [1 favorite]
What. The. Actual. F@%k???
There’s a simple explanation: Australia
posted by aubilenon at 6:52 AM on November 17, 2020 [1 favorite]
Platypuses are one of two Southern Hemisphere-dwelling animals whose names start with P that I've loved since I was a kid.
(The other ones are penguins -- when I was a kid I always dragged my parents to the penguin exhibit at the zoo, and when I saw Humboldt penguins in their natural habitat off the coast of Chile a couple of years ago, it was one of the highlights of my life.)
If I ever make it to Australia, it will absolutely be in no small part to try to see some platypuses for real, though apparently catching a glimpse of them in the wild is no easy feat.
posted by andrewesque at 7:24 AM on November 17, 2020 [1 favorite]
(The other ones are penguins -- when I was a kid I always dragged my parents to the penguin exhibit at the zoo, and when I saw Humboldt penguins in their natural habitat off the coast of Chile a couple of years ago, it was one of the highlights of my life.)
If I ever make it to Australia, it will absolutely be in no small part to try to see some platypuses for real, though apparently catching a glimpse of them in the wild is no easy feat.
posted by andrewesque at 7:24 AM on November 17, 2020 [1 favorite]
My scout troupe was the Purple Platypus Patrol.
('purple' for alliteration sake only ;-)
posted by sammyo at 7:41 AM on November 17, 2020 [1 favorite]
('purple' for alliteration sake only ;-)
posted by sammyo at 7:41 AM on November 17, 2020 [1 favorite]
The thing I never twigged until seeing them in person is just how small they are. For some reason, maybe the Robin Williams joke, I always expected them to be like beaver-sized, or at least muskrat. But they're smaller than a small housecat.
posted by aspersioncast at 3:49 PM on November 17, 2020
posted by aspersioncast at 3:49 PM on November 17, 2020
andrewesque- you should also check out the fairy penguins when you are here!
posted by freethefeet at 5:10 PM on November 17, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by freethefeet at 5:10 PM on November 17, 2020 [1 favorite]
They have an odd sex-determination system as well. Why have one pair of sex chromosomes when you can have five? (Males are XYXYXYXYXY and females are XXXXXXXXXX because why not.) And their sex determination is also kind of in between mammal and bird genetically and hormonally, which makes sense.
posted by Belostomatidae at 8:58 PM on November 17, 2020 [2 favorites]
posted by Belostomatidae at 8:58 PM on November 17, 2020 [2 favorites]
Ok, fine, now I’ve googled platypus sex. And then echidna sex, for good measure.
There were some videos, but that wasn’t the point. The point was that I am used to meiosis in species that have just a single pair of sex chromosomes. Meiosis in general is challenging because the chromosomes must pair up so that each resulting sex cell gets only one of each pair of chromosomes. Even for autosomes this is quite complicated.
But for the XY pair in human males, or the ZW in bird females, the sex chromosomes must pair up with each other so that you get again one per resulting sex cell. The mechanism to do that pairing is a little more complicated because the X and the Y aren’t the same (but it mostly works).
But, then, how do the monotremes do it? Because you if you’re a make platypus, you can’t be just pairing those sex chromosomes in meiosis. You want your sperm to either have XXXXX or YYYYY, not some mixture. (Echidnas females have 10 X’s, while echidna males have 5 X and 4 Y, so they have a related challenge).
The Googles helped me find this paper which explains that the sex chromosomes in male monotremes actually form one long chain during meiosis, instead of pairs, and then meiosis selects every other member of the chain to go into the cells. So if you’re a male platypus you get X1-Y1-X2-Y2-X3-Y3-X4-Y4-X5-Y5, and normal meiosis really does sort that into one sex cell getting all the X’s and the other getting all the Ys.
So platypus sex is complicated. And I haven’t even watched the videos yet.
posted by nat at 11:51 PM on November 17, 2020 [2 favorites]
There were some videos, but that wasn’t the point. The point was that I am used to meiosis in species that have just a single pair of sex chromosomes. Meiosis in general is challenging because the chromosomes must pair up so that each resulting sex cell gets only one of each pair of chromosomes. Even for autosomes this is quite complicated.
But for the XY pair in human males, or the ZW in bird females, the sex chromosomes must pair up with each other so that you get again one per resulting sex cell. The mechanism to do that pairing is a little more complicated because the X and the Y aren’t the same (but it mostly works).
But, then, how do the monotremes do it? Because you if you’re a make platypus, you can’t be just pairing those sex chromosomes in meiosis. You want your sperm to either have XXXXX or YYYYY, not some mixture. (Echidnas females have 10 X’s, while echidna males have 5 X and 4 Y, so they have a related challenge).
The Googles helped me find this paper which explains that the sex chromosomes in male monotremes actually form one long chain during meiosis, instead of pairs, and then meiosis selects every other member of the chain to go into the cells. So if you’re a male platypus you get X1-Y1-X2-Y2-X3-Y3-X4-Y4-X5-Y5, and normal meiosis really does sort that into one sex cell getting all the X’s and the other getting all the Ys.
So platypus sex is complicated. And I haven’t even watched the videos yet.
posted by nat at 11:51 PM on November 17, 2020 [2 favorites]
Come here a little late, but I still can't believe that no-one has yet posted the San Diego Zoo's PLATYPUS CAM!!
posted by Chuckles McLaughy du Haha, the depressed clown at 8:22 AM on November 18, 2020 [3 favorites]
posted by Chuckles McLaughy du Haha, the depressed clown at 8:22 AM on November 18, 2020 [3 favorites]
To steal from the puffin thread, more like PLURtypuses
posted by Cash4Lead at 9:38 AM on November 18, 2020
posted by Cash4Lead at 9:38 AM on November 18, 2020
Platypuses are one of two Southern Hemisphere-dwelling animals whose names start with P that I've loved since I was a kid.
We have Northern Hemisphere animals that begin with D that are really neat too. This guy's glowing under regular light!
posted by sneebler at 9:48 PM on November 18, 2020
We have Northern Hemisphere animals that begin with D that are really neat too. This guy's glowing under regular light!
posted by sneebler at 9:48 PM on November 18, 2020
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posted by Greg_Ace at 12:56 PM on November 16, 2020 [4 favorites]