24: Tardigrade & Platypus
Ellen: Hello Weatherfriends, this is Ellen Weatherford.
Christian: And Christian Weatherford.
Ellen: And this is Just the Zoo of Us, your favorite animal review podcast where we take your favorite species of animals and we review them and write them out of 10 in the categories of effectiveness, ingenuity and aesthetics.
Christian: We are not zoological experts. We do a lot of research and we try our best to make sure we're presenting information from trustworthy sources.
Ellen: This is a no fake news zone.
Christian: I'm going to source Lord of the Rings.
Ellen: Dragonology, from Ernest Drake. So Christian, last week I went first. So that means it's your turn.
Christian: What I bring to us this week, the whole internet asked for it. We're bringing it. That is, of course, the tardigrade.
Ellen: Finally.
Christian: Yes. This was submitted to us by Bo Gantt as well as the Nagging Naturalist.
Ellen: Thank you both.
Christian: Thank you, thank you.
Ellen: Excellent taste in friends.
Christian: I'll be pulling my information from livescience.com, and also one other source that I will quote as I'm using it because it kinda gives something away. So, kind of diving right in. You'll notice I did not say a scientific name.
Ellen: That's right. What's that about?
Christian: So the first thing I'm talking about, and also the first thing I learned: "tardigrade" actually describes any micro animal belonging to the tardigrada phylum.
Ellen: Oh that's a lot of... That's a very high level of classification.
Christian: Yes it is. So, it consists of over 1100 species, so I didn't even try to pick one.
Ellen: Okay. Broad strokes, folks.
Christian: Yes. So they are microscopic. I think a lot of people have heard or seen a lot about these on the internet in recent years.
Ellen: They're quite trendy.
Christian: Yeah. So their size can actually range quite a bit, relatively. So at their smallest, they're 0.05 millimeters long and at their largest, 1.2 millimeters long. So in inches, that's 0.002 inches to 0.05 inches.
Ellen: This is maybe the follicle of a chicken?
Christian: I've actually got some size comparisons to put this into perspective, cause that's one of those impossibly small things for us humans to think about. So to put that in context, the side of a single grain of ordinary table salt, so a single grain, imagine the tiny little cube, the side of one of those is about 0.3 millimeters long. So that means, at their smallest, you'd be able to line up six tardigrades end to end on the side of that grain of salt. While that their largest, it would actually span across four grains of salt. I mean, so while, you know, we're still at a small scale, that's still a pretty big range, right?
Ellen: That's true.
Christian: It's a whole magnitude, or actually a whole two magnitudes larger. Right?
Ellen: That is very much, yeah.
Christian: So partially that's because we're talking about a whole phylum, lots of different species in there. And talking about what they kind of look like, they're also known as water bears.
Ellen: I've heard that.
Christian: Yeah. To me, they look like worms with four sets of legs and a weird mouth.
Ellen: Yeah, they do have a bunch of legs, a whole bunch of little fat wiggly legs.
Christian: Yep. Cause they kind of swim.
Ellen: And then a little trumpet mouth.
Christian: Yeah, yeah. A telescoping mouth, kind of like an alien, like from the alien movies.
Ellen: Yes, definitely. When you see it, it does not look earthly.
Christian: Yeah. So the next part we'll usually talk about is taxonomic family. So again, we're talking about an entire phylum, which is comprised of 20 different families. I'm going to jump into our first category: effectiveness, which describes their physical abilities and attributes, how well they do the things they do. So for the tardigrade, I'm giving it a full 10 out of 10.
Ellen: Woof. Wow, that's a lot for a little tiny dude.
Christian: Let's talk about why.
Ellen: Okay. Please do. Please explain yourself.
Christian: They've been around for millions of years, millions. They've survived all five mass extinction events that we know about that has happened on the planet earth.
Ellen: They're not going anywhere.
Christian: They can live pretty much anywhere, but you'd normally find them in bodies of water, or in places that are wet in general.
Ellen: I guess that explains the water bear part of their name.
Christian: Yeah. And according to the paper "Survival of Tardigrades in Extreme Environments: A Model Animal for Astrobiology" by Daiki D. Horikawa, they can go into a state known as anhydrobiosis.
Ellen: Anhydrobiosis. Is that all one word?
Christian: It is.
Ellen: It's a big word. What's it mean?
Christian: So what that means is when all water is removed, it puts itself into a state of suspended animation. So while in that state, they have a high tolerance to ionizing radiation, a wide range of temperatures, the vacuum of space.
Ellen: Sure. Why not?
Christian: High pressures, they've actually survived open space travel through low earth orbit.
Ellen: Open space travel, meaning they're just like expose to space?
Christian: Yeah. While in low earth orbit.
Ellen: But why?
Christian: They wanted to see. So in those temperatures I mentioned, by the way, the range of temperatures they can withstand in this state are from -328 degrees Fahrenheit to +300 degrees Fahrenheit.
Ellen: Oh my goodness.
Christian: In Celsius, that is -200 to 148.9.
Ellen: Okay. So is this only while they're in that suspended animation state or can they...?
Christian: Yes. Because this, this is important. So I think a lot of people have heard that, oh they can survive anything. But a lot of that comes from while they're in this state. Cause while they're in this state, you know, it's specifically designed to keep them alive. So if they were suddenly in water, and now they're in space, I don't think it would work. Or suddenly exposed to these types of situations, although I don't, I don't know how quickly it can transition into this state.
Ellen: So they kind of go comatose. Right?
Christian: Yeah. So they basically slow down their metabolism to what is virtually a zero.
Ellen: Does that still count as them being alive though?
Christian: Yes!
Ellen: Does that count as them surviving? Cause they kind of are dead for a while.
Christian: Well, they come back from it. So when, when they're reintroduced to water, they come back after a couple of hours.
Ellen: This is like, um... What are those little sponge animals that you put them in water and then they unravel and turned into a little dinosaur or whatever?
Christian: Yeah. Basically.
Ellen: Just add water.
Christian: So when they go into this state, it also has special physical adaptations to avoid crystals forming when it freezes.
Ellen: Oh wow.
Christian: Cause that's, that's one of the most important things about when you're trying to freeze something without killing it, is not producing ice crystals. Cause those will puncture and burst the lining of cells. So that's the danger with freezing.
Ellen: So what do they do to not freeze?
Christian: So for that one, it has to do with the shape of its body. So when it enters this kind of state, it turns into a ball, or also known as a tun.
Ellen: A tun?
Christian: A T-U-N. Yeah. So it pulls its legs into its body, and so, and kind of turns into a ball.
Ellen: Okay. It kinda makes sense because I imagine when there's less surface area, there's just less available real estate for ice crystals to form on.
Christian: Yeah. So ice crystals are a little bit of a complicated topic. They have a lot to do with pressure and the speed at which the temperature changes. So I know back from my high school days, some of the best ice cream I've ever had was ice cream created with liquid nitrogen and that's because of the speed at which the cream and the sugar freezes prevents big ice crystals from forming, so it has a more smooth texture.
Ellen: Sure. Couldn't do that with the tardigrade, though.
Christian: I mean honestly, we've probably eaten thousands of tardigrades in our lifetime.
Ellen: Oh, gross! Aw, man!
Christian: Just putting that out there.
Ellen: This show is canceled. How come you keep doing this?!
Christian: Welcome to the microscopic world. So, 10 out of 10 effectiveness, they cannot die. And I for one, welcome our new overlords.
Ellen: If they could ever get over the size of a hair.
Christian: I believe one of the Ant Man movies features these guys, by the way.
Ellen: Oh yeah. I think I remember seeing them floating around in there.
Christian: On to ingenuity, how smart they are. Examples of this could be tool use, interesting techniques in combat.
Ellen: Pro strats.
Christian: Yeah. This guy has none of those. 1 out of 10.
Ellen: Oh, he min maxed.
Christian: They know how to eat and reproduce. Moving on.
Ellen: Oh my god these poor babies.
Christian: Well, just real quick what they eat, which is interesting. They eat fluid from other things, like algae, lichens, moss and even other microscopic animals including other tardigrades.
Ellen: Oh- wait. Okay. Hold on. So they eat fluid from these things?
Christian: Yes.
Ellen: What type of fluid? Do I want to know?
Christian: Well, you know, water-based protein stuff, the innards of other microscopic things.
Ellen: Gross. Okay. All right. Sure.
Christian: Moving on to aesthetics, how cute they are, how beautiful they are, or how the opposite of those things they are.
Ellen: I mean, you can't really see these guys. Right? I feel like they have to be disqualified.
Christian: So under a microscope, I would give these guys a 6 out of 10.
Ellen: Okay, that's fine.
Christian: They're sort of cute, I guess.
Ellen: You know what I think they look like?
Christian: What?
Ellen: Manatees.
Christian: That just reminded me of another one of their nicknames.
Ellen: What?
Christian: Moss pig.
Ellen: Moss pig. They look more like pigs than bears. I'll give them that.
Christian: Yeah. So like I mentioned earlier, they have four pairs of legs, the weird alien telescoping mouth. They also are chonk.
Ellen: They are, oh, they're so fat and round. They look like if you, uh, like touched them in any discernible way, like if you were able to, it looks like they would maybe have the texture of a balloon.
Christian: Yeah.
Ellen: Or like they look- they look inflatable to me. They look like a balloon animal.
Christian: Like you would see on a parade route or something.
Ellen: Yes! Oh my gosh! Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. Tardigrade float. I got to see it.
Christian: But it's, like, flesh colored and...
Ellen: Ooh... No.
Ellen: So yeah, that's 6 out of 10 for aesthetics.
Ellen: I think that, thinking about the way that the tardigrade looks, I think that the color that they are has a lot to do with how cute I think they are. Because once you suggested flesh colored, they stopped being cute immediately.
Christian: Well, I think colorations of these guys are usually... Like someone colored it after the fact.
Ellen: Oh sure. Like CGI, sort of.
Christian: Something like that. So because usuallym I think under the microscope, they're mostly transparent.
Ellen: That makes sense.
Christian: Yeah. Or, if you see electron microscope images of them, they just have to pick a color for that. That's not really what the color is.
Ellen: Hmm. Uh, I'm gonna say purple. I think they're purple.
Christian: Yeah. So conservation status, not evaluated.
Ellen: Wow. Surprise, surprise.
Christian: Probably not hurting.
Ellen: Probably fine. I mean, if literally five consecutive extinction events couldn't take them down, I don't think we have to worry about them. I don't think they need our help is what I'm saying.
Christian: They'll probably outlive us, in all honesty.
Ellen: We probably need help from them more than they need from us.
Christian: So earlier I mentioned the anhydrobiosis, that is actually one kind of what's known as cryptobiosis
Ellen: Crypto... biosis?
Christian: Yeah. So this refers to, just states in general that it goes into to avoid dying.
Ellen: And this is just one?
Christian: This is one kind. So this one is water driven.
Ellen: Okay.
Christian: They can also do anoxybiosis. So this is when the water they live in is low in oxygen, because they still need oxygen. They normally absorb oxygen through their... I say skin, but it's really whatever that outer layer is.
Ellen: Their membrane.
Christian: Yeah, yeah. So during this state, they stretch out and lower their metabolism. So they stretch out their legs...
Ellen: Awww.
Christian: So increasing surface area.
Ellen: There you go.
Christian: And their muscles are able to absorb enough oxygen to survive.
Ellen: Okay. That makes sense. Interesting. Do you- would you find these guys typically in freshwater or saltwater or does it matter?
Christian: I believe both.
Ellen: Okay.
Christian: Um, and usually close to the bottom with like silt and that kind of thing.
Ellen: Oh, sure, sure, sure. You're not going to find them just like floating around?
Christian: You probably could. I wouldn't look for them there.
Ellen: I wouldn't look at them at all.
Christian: I mean, cause all you'd be doing is like, I don't know, collecting some water.
Ellen: And just hoping for the best.
Christian: Getting like, an eyedropper and putting it on a microscope slide.
Ellen: Oh my God. I cannot imagine something more boring.
Christian: So yeah, that's the tardigrade.
Ellen: Very good. That's a good friend. It's a funky little dude, huh?
Christian: It is.
Ellen: I feel like they, in recent years, have had quite a few crests and troughs of popularity. You know, I feel like they will spike every once in a while where suddenly everybody will be talking about them all the time, and you'll see a bunch of like memes about them and stuff like that. And then people will kind of get burnt out on them and forget about them for like a year or two, and then all of a sudden everybody will talk about them again.
Christian: I think part of that is because the studies around how they handle space have been done in the past decade or so.
Ellen: That makes sense. That's true. We were just talking very recently about that thing where a bunch of tardigrades, what, crashed on the moon or something like that? There are a bunch of tardigrades on the moon.
Christian: I mean, if they're there, they're in a suspended state so.
Ellen: There's probably like a whole bunch of them just floating around in space. What if they're aliens though? Have you considered that? Have you considered that they might be aliens?
Christian: Maybe.
Ellen: Okay, so. Hear me out.
Christian: Uh-huh...
Ellen: ...They're aliens. That's all the details I have.
Christian: Okay.
Ellen: What if- wait, you said there are millions of years old?
Christian: Yeah.
Ellen: How old? Were they around at the same time as dinosaurs?
Christian: Before, probably.
Ellen: Oh, okay. I was about to say, like, or did they just mysteriously appear coincidentally at the same time as the giant meteor that wiped out the dinosaurs?
Christian: You know, I wasn't there at the time.
Ellen: Okay, Christian. Play with me in this space.
Christian: I'm over here dodging dinosaurs with the microscope.
Ellen: Like, "hold on, I need to take water samples!" I'm saying, okay, so you weren't there so you can't technically prove that they didn't come in on the giant meteorite that wiped out the dinosaurs.
Christian: Do you come in on that meteorite? Dun dun dun!
Ellen: I'm just saying you've only known me for a few years so you don't know either.
Christian: Matrix.
Ellen: That's not what that movie was about.
Christian: Pretty sure I remember there being dinosaurs.
Ellen: No, that was Keanu Reeves. I know you always get them confused.
Christian: Okay. That's the end of my thing.
Ellen: Thanks babe. You did great.
Christian: Thanks.
Ellen: Before we move on to my animal, I just want to let y'all know real quick that we have a Patreon and it has some really cool stuff on it like access to a feed of the show with no ads so you can skip the commercials, and also some other really cool stuff like we send out photo prints and a patron only discord and all sorts of really neat stuff. So if you want to support us and help us grow and help us get bigger and better, just check us out at patrion.com/justthezooofus, and for this week I would like to thank our patrons, Briana Feinberg, Krystina Sanders and the Jungle Gym Queen.
Ellen: Thanks y'all.
Christian: Thank you.
Christian: Alright Ellen, what do you bring to this animal space this week?
Ellen: Well I suggest you settle in, get yourself a drink, a blanket, get nice and comfy cause we're going to be here a while.
Christian: Well, I'm sitting.
Ellen: This week, I have the platypus. Okay. I should specify: the duck-billed platypus, being the mammal. There is a apparently a type of beetle that's also called the platypus. And this is not that.
Christian: You can't just jack a style like that.
Ellen: Well, tell that to the people that named the platypus.
Christian: Dear beetle people...
Ellen: No, it was the mammal people that named it the platypus that had already had that name. Like the beetle had the name first.
Christian: Dear beetle people, get over it.
Ellen: Get over yourselves. Honestly. Make way, there's a new platypus in town.
Christian: So what is the word platypus... Does that have some sort of significance there?
Ellen: It comes from Greek, meaning flat foot.
Christian: Ah, okay.
Ellen: Yep. So the scientific name for the platypus is Ornithorhynchus anatinus. And this species was submitted by Stephanie Phengchanh, Erica Carr, and the Jungle Gym Queen. So thanks y'all! And I'm getting my information from the Australian Museum and Queensland Government's Department of Environment and Science. If you've never seen a platypus before, it is a little mammal. It's furry, it's brown, has big thick tail and has a big leathery bill on the front of its face, just like a duck.
Christian: Leathery?
Ellen: Yes. Don't worry. I'll explain a little more later. Okay. They are about 20 inches or 51 centimeters long, and about 3 pounds, or 1.36 kilograms. So maybe like a cat, cat-sized but with very short stubby little legs. Not as tall as a cat, but about the same body size. You can find these little dudes in Eastern Australia and Tasmania throughout freshwater river systems. Their taxonomic family is called ornithorhynchidae. Now, taxonomy for the platypus. Boy, it's a roller coaster. It's a wild ride. The platypus is the only surviving member of its taxonomic family. Its closest living relative- you know, what do you think its closest living relatives are? If you could pick, there's literally only one animal on this planet that you could- well I mean it's four different species of a type of animal, but there's literally only one animal in this world that you could say they're related to. What do you think it is?
Christian: For some reason, I don't know why it is, but I think of the echidna.
Ellen: Ah, you got it. It's the echidna!
Christian: I must have read that somewhere, then.
Ellen: Yeah, probably. Um, so yeah, their only living relatives are the four different species of echidnas. So platypus and echidnas make up the order monotremata, these are monotremes. Have you ever heard this word before? Monotreme?
Christian: I think so, I don't remember what it means.
Ellen: It was one of those ones that I heard it and I was like, it was definitely one of the terms bouncing around in my brain but it didn't necessarily- I didn't know off the top of my head what it meant. So I looked into it. Don't worry. These are the only egg-laying mammals, and their name "monotreme" is actually a reference to the fact that they have a cloaca. So both the egg laying and the cloaca are traits that are shared by reptiles and birds, but not by any other mammal. So there are actually a few ways in which the platypus is strangely similar to reptiles and there's a reason for that. The reason for that is that monotremes diverged from the non-egg-laying mammals, that lineage being called the "therian" line, like the therian mammals are the non-egg-laying ones. So monotremes diverged from the therian lineage about 166 million years ago.
Christian: Wow.
Ellen: Yes. And the therians include both placental mammals and marsupials.
Christian: Okay.
Ellen: So monotremes split off before even them. So long, long time ago. So just to put that into some sort of perspective, because it's a very long period of time: cetaceans, which are whales and dolphins and stuff like that, they branched off from the rest of the even-toed ungulates and started to transition into becoming aquatic 50 million years ago.
Christian: Wow...
Ellen: Yeah. So that was like, a third of the amount of time that monotremes were split off from mammals, and they turned into whales.
Christian: Which is crazy, by the way.
Ellen: Yeah. So that's just to kind of give you some perspective of the sort of timeframe we're working with here, that they've been separate from other mammals for 166 million years.
Christian: Gotcha.
Ellen: This is why you'll, a lot of people will call the platypus sort of primitive in some ways because it has a bunch of traits that are left over from reptilian ancestors that the rest of the mammals don't have any more. They got rid of those traits, but the platypus still has them. You can call them primitive in the sense that most mammals don't have those traits anymore, but I mean the platypus is still alive. It's still here. It's not primitive. It's still here.
Christian: This probably suggests there were more monotremes like them at one point.
Ellen: Oh yeah, definitely.
Christian: But now this, you know, this small group is just what's still here.
Ellen: Yeah. So platypus and echidna both live in Australia, but there was at one point a line of monotremes that lived in South America because way, way, way back during, you know, the times when the continents were not where they currently are, South America was on the same like mega continent with Australia. So there was a branch of monotremes that landed there, and then after they split, they were still there, but they've died off by now. Yeah. But so just to give you a sort of idea of what kind of anatomical mess we're about to get into with this animal, the platypus is quite the unique little delight.
Christian: Alright.
Ellen: Yes. So I'm going to start with effectiveness just like you did. I give the platypus a 9 out of 10.
Christian: That's very good.
Ellen: It's excellent. First up, I want to talk about their bill because that's probably the most noticeable feature of the platypus. So though it is kind of shaped like a duck's bill, the platypus bill is not as hard and rigid as a duck's bill is. You know, like a duck's bill is kind of similar to like, bone or something like that. It's very, very hard. Um, the platypus bill is not like that. It's actually covered in a leathery skin, though it does have bone support. So if you look at the skeleton of a platypus, if you look at their skull, they actually have bones going into the bill, and like they form the sides of the bill, but the front- they like curve inwards and stop. The bone doesn't go all the way around.
Christian: Okay.
Ellen: The bone doesn't form the entire bill. It just kind of provides the support for it.
Christian: Sure.
Ellen: And the rest of it is skin. So now here's where the bill kind of pops off a little bit. Inside of this-
Christian: Like literally pops off?
Ellen: No, it doesn't literally pop off.
Christian: Just like the cartoons!
Ellen: No, it's not like that. It's not like Daffy Duck when he like, something explodes in his face and his bill like, turns around to the back of his head.
Christian: Duck hunting season.
Ellen: No, this is where the bill gets wild. The bill is equipped with both mechanoreceptors and electroreceptors. So it has these little sensors in its bill that can detect changes in pressure as well as electrical pulses in the water around them. And these are electrical pulses that are made by muscle movements of its prey. So if anything's moving around in the water, it can not only feel like the actual movement, but it's actually detecting the tiny, tiny, tiny little electric signals that your muscles are sending out. That's insane.
Christian: Yeah. I mean that's like sharks, right?
Ellen: Yes. This is the same sort of mechanic that you see in sharks and stingrays, which is wild! That's insane. Like, so echidnas actually have a little bit of this, not to the same degree that platypus do because platypus do, you know, all of their hunting and feeding in the water and echidnas don't. Echidnas are terrestrial. So it's thought that the reason that echidnas have some of those leftover electroreceptors is that they come from the same ancestor as platypus, they just don't need those receptors anymore. So they're kind of vestigial, really.
Christian: Sure.
Ellen: They don't need them, but they just still have them because they haven't necessarily lost them yet. Because they're not hurting them. Right? So it's pretty interesting. So yeah, these electroreceptors help the platypus find really, really small prey, even in really, really murky water. So when they're swimming around in very murky water, what they actually do is they close their eyes completely while they're diving. So they close up their eyes, they close up their ears and their nose and everything and they are diving around in the water guided only by sensing electric signals. Really crazy.
Christian: Yeah, for sure.
Ellen: It's very cool.
Christian: So, what kind of bodies of water, is it usually a moving water? Stagnant water?
Ellen: It could be moving water, but it's not very deep. Think like, streams and rivers and...
Christian: Sure.
Ellen: Not very deep water because they are still semi-aquatic. They're not completely, they don't live their whole life in the water.
Christian: Okay.
Ellen: Yeah. They actually have to come out of the water to breed, lay their eggs, stuff like that. So kind of on like riverbanks, and near ponds and stuff like that. But they can swim and moving water. It's no problem.
Christian: Sure, sure, sure.
Ellen: So they're actually really good swimmers, which I'll get to in a second. But so what they do eat is just little critters that they catch in the water. So these could be like bugs or shrimp or tadpoles, or stuff like that. Now this is what's interesting: instead of teeth, their bills are lined inside with these pads that have ridges on them. And those ridges are what they use, they- what they do is they catch food and then they mash those ridges together and like kind of grind the food with these ridged pads.
Christian: Okay.
Ellen: And that's how they mash up their food and eat it. Yeah. So they don't actually have teeth. They're not the only mammals that don't have teeth though. Like we've talked about anteaters, like we talked about the tamandua, they don't, they don't have any teeth.
Christian: Sure.
Ellen: So it's like, hey, if you don't need them, what good are they doing you?
Christian: There are other non-mammal creatures that have a similar sort of...
Ellen: It reminded me a little bit of the cownose ray's grinding plates that we talked about.
Christian: Yeah.
Ellen: So similar to that, just these plates with ridges in them that they use to mash their food. So next I want to talk about their tail. A lot of people think that it looks like a beaver tail. It does have that sort of same round flat look, but it's covered in hair. I think a beaver's tail is usually just like bald skin, right?
Christian: Yeah.
Ellen: So the platypus tail is very broad and rather than when you're thinking of maybe an otter's tail, you think of something that's narrow and streamlined. This is more of a thick, broad tail. And the reason for that is that they use it for stabilizing themselves while they're swimming, but also for storing fat deposits in their tail.
Christian: That makes sense. I think we, didn't we recently talk about something that does... does that?
Ellen: You're going to have it to be more specific. I'm sorry.
Christian: There was something recently that it was storing fat in a place that I wasn't expecting.
Ellen: Oh, penguins that store fat in their feet, to keep them from freezing on the ice.
Christian: Yeah! That's what it was.
Ellen: Yeah, that was kind of a funny one. But yeah, so platypus store fat in their tail. So that's, that's good for them. That's a good idea.
Christian: I wonder in which dimension does it grow as the fat deposit deposits?
Ellen: Probably the thick factor, right? Like it probably gets more thick.
Christian: What if they get just bigger than they have more speed?
Ellen: What?
Christian: It just gets wider and wider.
Ellen: Oh my gosh. So they, you know what's funny? They actually don't use their tails to generate thrust in the water., like you might expect them to.
Christian: Well, never mind.
Ellen: I'm actually like right now about to talk about that. So I want to get into the Halloween spirit a little bit by looking at the platypus skeleton. It's a spooky, scary skeleton segment. I'm getting this information from an article by the University College London by Jack Ashby, on April 13th, 2018, the title of the article is "A Tour of the Platypus Skeleton" that I found really, really interesting. I really liked it. So this is where I saw like, the platypus skull and everything like that. The skeleton has some really interesting similarities with lizard skeletons, the most noticeable of which being that their legs are held straight out to the sides rather than underneath the body. So this is like a lizard. Like a lizard's legs are splayed out horizontally, that's how the platypus is. They're kind of like a big hairy lizard.
Christian: This kind of explains why I think they look weird when they're swimming.
Ellen: They do look weird when they're swimming. Yes. Yeah. Cause their legs are splayed out to the side. So when you see something like an otter or a an aquatic mammal, like a seal or something, usually their limbs are held very close underneath them. Right?
Christian: Yeah.
Ellen: Platypus, not necessarily, cause they got big old lizard feet. There's one adaptation they have that really gives them an advantage that is very noticeable when you look at their skeleton. Probably not so much when you look at them with all of their skin and fur on, but when you look at their skeleton, you can really tell that their shoulder blades are comically large. Their shoulder blades are just enormous, and they kind of jut out, like to the sides almost. They have just huge shoulder blades, like the bones are just gargantuan! They're so big. So the idea there is that that probably is because it allows for their arm and shoulder muscles to get huge. So they might not look like it, but platypus are jacked. They're just completely ripped. They have like, huge arm and shoulder muscles underneath all that fluffy little fur. Now, the reason for this is that they kind of need really strong arms because they have to dig burrows to nest in, and to raise their babies in, to lay their eggs in and stuff like that. But they also swim with their front arms.
Christian: So just their front arms?
Ellen: Kind of just their front arms. So they're, they're generating their speed in the water with their front arms. Yeah. So they're steering themselves with their back legs and tail, but they're not actually generating thrust.
Christian: Interesting.
Ellen: Yeah. So they're kind of just like pulling themselves through the water with their front legs. So that's why their arms are so, uh, buff.
Christian: And they have webbed toes, right?
Ellen: They do. Yeah. All of their feet are webbed. So that helps them, you know, generate some drag in the water. But yeah, they're just pulling themselves through the water with just sheer muscle. Arm muscle. Pure gains, baby.
Christian: I think I just realized why so many people imagine them having beaver tails.
Ellen: Why?
Christian: Because that show Phineas and Ferb draws it like that.
Ellen: Oh yeah, that's true. You know what's funny about Phineas and Ferb? So there is a platypus on the show named Perry the platypus. If you've never seen the show, it's a cute little show, but they have a pet platypus named Perry the platypus and he is blue, right?
Christian: Like a teal almost?
Ellen: He's like tealish blue and he leads this double life where he's actually a secret agent. He's like a crazy like spy and does all these cool, like saves the world and stuff all the time. But here's the weird thing about Perry the platypus, in the show he makes this weird little noise that I cannot replicate. I looked up a video of the sound that a platypus actually makes... It's pretty spot on. Like it's pretty much exactly the way that they made him sound in the show.
Christian: That's so weird how they were so selective on which pieces to be correct on.
Ellen: It's like the one thing about the show that makes any sense at all.
Christian: I don't think I've ever seen Perry be in a body of water either.
Ellen: Yeah. Like in the show he's just walking around on two feet. Right?
Christian: And also like more modern mammals like with the legs underneath them at all that.
Ellen: Yeah. So that is not correct about the platypus. It's just really weird. Like the one thing that they got right was the sound that he makes.
Christian: Yeah.
Ellen: It's really weird. But so anyway, yeah that's the- that's the platypus skeleton.
Christian: Got it.
Ellen: It has some interesting things about it. So I want to talk a little bit about their self defense because they actually have a little bit of self defense mechanisms, but not like 100%. So the male platypus have sharp spurs on their heels of their hind legs only.
Christian: Okay.
Ellen: And these spurs are connected to glands that produce venom. The venom causes extreme pain.
Christian: Oof.
Ellen: Yeah. So it won't kill a human. It could possibly kill a smaller animal like a dog or something, but it probably won't kill a human. I don't think there's any recorded cases of a human dying from being stung by a platypus.
Christian: Sure.
Ellen: But it will hurt very, very badly. Now this spur, it can be used in self defense, but only males have the spur. So females can be born with the spur when they're babies, but it falls off before they become adults.
Christian: Really?
Ellen: And they lose the spur. So only the males keep the spur and only the males produce venom. So the fact that females don't have this venomous spur leads scientists to believe that they only use it to fight each other, and that the males are using it to fight each other over territory.
Christian: Well...
Ellen: So it's not really super useful for like defending yourself from predators. So I couldn't give them like, full self-defense points for that because it's not really what they use it for. It does, however, make the platypus really dangerous to handle.
Christian: Yeah, I imagine.
Ellen: So if you see one just to go ahead and don't touch it, just leave it alone.
Christian: I mean, the place where I would be to see them, I would hope you would know not to touch anything.
Ellen: If you're already in Australia, just follow the rule of thumb and if you see something just don't touch it. But, so I did deduct one point, and I deducted that one point for how clumsy and awkward they are on the land.
Christian: Yeah.
Ellen: So they're, they're pretty good at swimming around. They're good swimmers, they're good diggers. But when it comes to actually walking around on land, the combination of how short and stubby their legs are and how splayed they are to the sides, and also the fact that they have webbed feet, it just makes them really bad at walking around. They're just bad at it. Maybe I wouldn't have taken off a point for that if they didn't have to come on land sometimes. Right? They're not fully aquatic.
Christian: Sure.
Ellen: So they're just kind of trash on land. Yeah. So if one is chasing you down, you'll be fine. So that was my deduction. Now here's a weird one. I did not either reward or deduct points for this, I just wanted to talk about it and I didn't know where else to put it, so here you go: platypus and echidna do not have stomachs. They just don't have them. So the food goes straight through the throat, into the intestine and that's it. So this is really interesting. I got this information from a National Geographic article by Ed Yong titled "How the Platypus and a Quarter of Fishes Lost Their Stomachs." This was from December 3rd of 2013. It is kind of thought that because their diets are really, really high in shellfish, shellfish are high in contents that neutralize stomach acids. So there's no point in having a stomach that produces digestive enzymes if all of those enzymes are just going to be canceled out anyway by the kind of food that they eat. So it's kind of like a waste, I guess, of metabolic activity to even have a stomach at that point if the things that you're eating don't require any sort of stomach acid to break them down. So they've just kind of skipped the stomach altogether. Now that's just like a suggested- an idea about why they don't have stomachs. And it's really weird because the only other vertebrates like this are a bunch of fish. It's just monotremes and then some fish. No reptile is like this. No bird is like this. No mammal is like this. It's just monotremes and like, some types of fish.
Christian: Crazy.
Ellen: Platypus, what are you doing? Platypus. Get your life together. What are you doing? Why are you doing this?
Christian: When you say no to updates for too long.
Ellen: They just opted out of the Windows update. You know what they, they kept hitting "remind me in 4 hours" for 166 million years. That's, so that's the effectiveness for the platypus.
Christian: Neat.
Ellen: This is a weirdo, but I love him for it. So ingenuity for the platypus, I couldn't find a lot on them and like, their behavior in the wild. I gave them a 6 out of 10 because they seem like they know what they're doing well enough, but I mean, nothing spectacular. So something that they do that I thought was really interesting that helped them turn a weakness into a strength: to help them with mashing up their foods, since they don't have any teeth, they'll sometimes scoop up gravel or pebbles with the rest of their food and roll it around in their mouths to help break up the food that they're eating.
Christian: Okay.
Ellen: Yeah, so we a little bit talked about the axolotl scooping up rocks and using rocks to help it, but that was more for a balance thing. That was for like, to supplement its buoyancy. This is different. The platypus is not like, eating the rocks. It just will scoop them up in its bill and then use the rocks to help break down the food that it's eating.
Christian: Man, if only it had some sort of thing in its mouth that was hard as a rock...
Ellen: If only there was, if only there was some sort of bony structures that they could have in their mouths that might let them break food down. I don't know if there's any sort of animal that has anything like that in their mouth, but maybe it's something they could consider looking into. So I want to talk a little bit about the reproductive cycle of the platypus, or at least the sort of life cycle of the platypus since it's, since it is so different from other mammals. Right? So after mating the female loads up on food and she fills her tummy and her tail, of course, with fat. And then what she does is she digs herself a little nesting burrow with those big buff, very strong arms. She digs herself a little nest, she climbs inside and then she actually blocks off the entrance with dirt. Yeah. So she covers up her own little nest and she clogs it up. This is both to protect the nest and also to insulate it so it traps warmth and humidity inside.
Christian: Okay.
Ellen: For the duration of her nesting period. So then she lays her eggs. It's usually two, but it could be, it could sometimes be one or three, but it's usually two. She incubates them for a few weeks until they hatch, and then she nurses the baby for a couple of months until they're ready to leave the borrow. So she does produce milk, so platypus do produce milk like other mammals, but not necessarily the way that other mammals do. So she essentially sweats the milk out through these little patches on her skin. So it's a little different from the way that other mammals produce milk. I mean, other than the fact that she, you know, lays her eggs rather than giving birth to her babies, you know, the whole like child rearing process is kind of similar to other mammals where she nurses them for a while and takes care of them in the nest and then kind of sets them free a few months later. So moving on to aesthetics, the last segment for the platypus. I give them a 7 out of 10.
Christian: Okay.
Ellen: They're vaguely unsettling, in some ways, to look at because the bill doesn't necessarily look like it is part of the animal. Right? It looks like it's stuck on.
Christian: Sure.
Ellen: Because so when you think of like, a bird's beak or a duck's bill, it very clearly transitions into the face very smoothly. Right? Like it goes like from bill into the face, whereas the platypus's bill has this sort of like, fold over it. It like rolls in such a way where it definitely looks like it's just like... Kinda glued on. It definitely doesn't look like it's supposed to be part of the rest of the animal.
Christian: Sure.
Ellen: Especially if you're looking at the mammal part of it and thinking like, "oh it's like a little otter or a beaver or something." It definitely is unexpected and very awkward in its sort of design. So you know, famously when the platypus was first discovered by European scientists, they assumed it was a fraudulent hoax and they kind of poo-pooed it and they threw it in the trash because they said like, basically like, haha, very funny, nice troll. And then they threw it away because they didn't think it was real. So there's actually kind of a, a little bit of context for this. The first specimens that made it back to Europe were either skins or taxidermies, but the problem is that around the same time there were a lot of vendors that were selling what they called "mermaids"...
Christian: Oh boy.
Ellen: That were actually just monkeys, like taxidermied monkeys glued onto fish tails.
Christian: Oh, boy.
Ellen: Yeah. So that was definitely happening. There definitely were a lot of fraudulent, you know, people saying, "Oh look at this crazy animal," but they had really just taken two animals and taxidermied them together in some weird way. I think that they were already kind of in a skeptical mood because of that. So I kinda can't really blame them too much for being like, "Oh, this is fake news" and throwing the platypus away.
Christian: This is kind of the basis for that ad series for Lunchables, with the jackalope and the platypus. Do you know what I'm talking about?
Ellen: Is the platypus in that? I thought the platypus had like, something weird about it.
Christian: It's just a regular- I mean, a talking platypus, but an otherwise regular platypus. But the jackalope is just a rabbit, you know, with deer antlers on it.
Ellen: Right. Same- I think they thought it was something like that. Right? Like, oh somebody just thought they were being funny and just like tacked another part of an animal on here.
Christian: Yeah. Yeah.
Ellen: So that's what they thought was happening, and it wasn't until a while later that a preserved specimen was able to make it back in such a way that convinced scientists that it was actually real.
Christian: What century would that have been like?
Ellen: I don't- Oh my God, I do not know.
Christian: Well I was trying to think, could they have just taken a picture?
Ellen: No, definitely before that. One thing that I did want to mention is that there is this picture floating around the internet....
Christian: Oh, yeah.
Ellen: There is a- it's a real photograph that is floating around the internet that is often posted on social media saying that it is a baby platypus. And it is very, very cute. It is very, very fluffy. It has big round eyes and the face of like, a duckling.
Christian: Yeah.
Ellen: It has like a duckling face with little little cute cheeks and big round eyes. And it has one back leg up in the air and the photo is extremely cute, and it is also extremely FAKE.
Christian: Dun dun dun!
Ellen: It is a doll. So the photograph is a legitimate photograph, but the photograph is of a doll. So the doll is made by Russian artist Yulia Leonovich, and it's a cute doll but it was sold like a year ago. It's not available anymore. You cannot buy it.
Christian: And to give the artist credit, you know, that was what the picture was used for, to sell the doll, right?
Ellen: Yes. It was a listing for the item on deviantArt.
Christian: Yeah.
Ellen: So this was a deviantArt picture that got just kind of saved, and then like somebody put it on Instagram or something and then it just took off from there. And now you'll see everybody sharing it saying, "Oh look how cute baby platypus are." And it's like, well okay, this doll inspired by baby platypus is super cute, sure. But it's not real. So let's talk about what real baby platypus look like.
Christian: Yay!
Ellen: They look like little balls of dough.
Christian: I love it.
Ellen: They're not fluffy at all. They have, they have like some... Like baby hairs on them, but they're very, very short. They look like velvet, sort of. And they're extremely chubby. Like they're just little dough balls, and they're covered in fat rolls and they have these teeny, teeny, teeny tiny eyes. And you can't even see their eyes under their fat rolls. That's how fat they are. Yeah. And they look like a mess. Even the adult platypus has really small eyes. So, the baby platypus is cute enough on its own. It doesn't need a doll making people think that they're, like, I don't know. I don't know why this is something that bothers me because honestly, in the grand scheme of things, who cares if you thought you saw baby platypus but it was just a doll. Like who cares? It's just something that bothers me.
Christian: I don't know. So speaking of which, what is the plural form of platypus?
Ellen: I'm glad you asked. I have detailed notes on this.
Christian: Oh boy.
Ellen: So the name platypus comes from Greek, the suffix I suppose, of "pus" at the end, P-U-S, means foot. And the plural of that should be "podes," P-O-D-E-S.
Christian: Yes.
Ellen: So you could make the case that it should be called platypodes or something like that.
Christian: Sure.
Ellen: Nobody says that. Come on. That's ridiculous. Nobody says that. Now some people will say it's supposed to be platypi. That is very wrong, because that is assuming that the -us ending comes from Latin, just because it ends in -us. But it doesn't come from Latin. It comes from Greek, so you do not use a Latin plural ending for a Greek word, so it's definitely not platypi.
Christian: Makes sense.
Ellen: But we're speaking English, so you could say platypuses, that's fine. You can say platypus. That's fine. Don't say platypi. It's definitely not that. Platypodes is... Okay. You sound kind of weird, but it'll pass. It sounds like the Well Actually Guy. So I say platypus, just because I feel like platypuses sounds weird, platypi is wrong, platypodes sounds wrong. I just say platypus. On that note, there is a little thing that floats around about platypus on the internet, where usually as a caption on that exact same picture of the little platypus doll with a leg up in the air, people will a lot of times put a little caption or comment on there saying, "did you know that a baby platypus is called a puggle?" You can call it a puggle I guess if you want...
Christian: I mean, you can call it whatever you want, really.
Ellen: Because language is arbitrary and meaningless. So you know, just make up whatever you want, I guess. But there's also another one, like a similar sort of like internet rumor about what the baby platypus is called that I like way better and it has platypup. That's also totally made up, but I like it better than puggle. So yeah, there is actually no word for the baby platypus.
Christian: I'm so upset.
Ellen: It's just a baby. platypus. So you can call them a platypup if you want, and you can call them a puggle if you want, I guess. But don't expect anybody to know what you're talking about.
Christian: Platyput me out of my misery.
Ellen: Those sound waves don't look good. Those aren't going to be fun to edit.
Christian: Have fun, future Ellen. I love you.
Ellen: Anyway, the platypus is still pretty cute. Uh, it is very otter-like, and you know I'm into that. They have cute little webbed feet and you know I like that. So I dunno. I still think they're on the cute side. Little weird, but cute.
Christian: Are we going to come back to the cloaca thing?
Ellen: The cloaca thing? No, we're not. I was just going to leave it alone. I figured I gave you all the information I needed because this is a safe for work show, so no, I'm not going to go into more detail about the cloaca.
Christian: Okay.
Ellen: It was a thing that I really just wanted to mention to highlight the similarities that it has with lizards that makes it so different from any other mammal. Right? That's just one of those really, really weird things about it.
Christian: Even though looking at them, they look like they would have more in common with birds just because of the bill.
Ellen: That's the weird thing, right? That's one of those weird convergent evolution things, and also their venom is another example of convergent evolution because the venom that they produce shares a lot of chemical properties with venom that is made by snakes.
Christian: Does the platypus hold the title of the only mammal with venom?
Ellen: No. There are other venomous mammals.
Christian: Interesting.
Ellen: There are actually a few... The slow loris produces venom... There are actually quite a few other venomous mammals, but it is a very interesting, and there's just so much about it that is just so bizarre and like the most random stuff, like it not having a stomach. Why? Why? That's so extra. Why would you do that?
Christian: It's the opposite of extra.
Ellen: But yeah, to wrap things up for the platypus, their conservation status is Near Threatened according to the IUCN Red List. So there are a lot of factors contributing to the decline of platypus numbers, but one of the biggest is climate change. There are a lot of droughts and really weird rain patterns that are affecting the freshwater habitats that they live in, but there's also a lot of extraction of water for industry and agriculture that's depleting the freshwater sources that they need to live in. So they're facing a lot of habitat loss and they're also dealing with water pollution in their areas. Pne organization that you can check out if you're interested in helping support the platypus is the Australian Platypus Conservancy.
Christian: Nice.
Ellen: Yeah. So go check them out if you want to dig more into the platypus and see how you can help them out. So that wraps things up for the platypus.
Christian: Thank you honey.
Ellen: No problem.
Christian: It was very interesting.
Ellen: I thought so too. I really enjoyed learning about this animal. I've talked for so long. I've taken up so much of these good people's time, but I'm not done yet. I have some audience responses to share and I kind of farmed for them a little bit. Last week, I talked about the roly poly.
Christian: Yeah.
Ellen: We mentioned a few names for the roly poly, and I kind of was interested to see what other people actually call roly polies because some of the names that I saw listed for them were not known to me. So I posted both in the Facebook group and on Twitter asking people where they live and what they call a roly poly. Most people, according to my graph, 62.2% of people who responded said roly poly. However, the second highest number of responses was for the potato bug. 16.2% of people who responded said the potato bug. And it seemed to be like most of the people who said potato bug lived in the North. People that said potato bug lived in places like the Midwest, Canada pretty much anywhere north of where we live.
Christian: Interesting.
Ellen: Yeah. So the potato bug was pretty common. A few people said doodle bug, the doodle bug, which was represented in North Carolina and Texas. And this was the one that I had never heard before in my life: slater.
Christian: Oh yeah, I saw this.
Ellen: Yeah. So a few people responded from New Zealand and said that they call them slaters, and this was something that I had never heard before.
Christian: Interesting.
Ellen: But yeah, that was interesting. I always feel like we're kind of exchanging information here, right? Like I come on the podcast, I take the microphone and I teach you some things, and then once I'm done, I step away and you guys teach me some things back. So thank you for teaching me the name of the roly poly in New Zealand.
Christian: That's very good.
Ellen: Yeah, that's all I had. I just wanted to talk about the conversation we had about roly polies. So thank you so much for spending this time with us, listening to us talk about our animal friends, the tardigrade and the platypus. This was a couple of unique critters this episode, huh?
Christian: Yeah, they were both taxonomically...
Ellen: Unique.
Christian: I was going to say complicated, but for different reasons.
Ellen: An unintended theme this week of oddballs.
Christian: Yeah.
Ellen: That was our theme this week. Thank you so much to everybody who has been listening to this show and recommending us to your friends and talking about us on Twitter and all that cool stuff that you guys do. You really stoke the coals that keep this flame burning, so thank you. You can connect with us on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. Just search the title of the show and that'll get you to us. Please come join our group and hang out with us cause it's really fun and great.
Christian: I'm on discord now.
Ellen: Oh yeah, you are on discord now, aren't you?
Christian: I'm having to get used to using discord for things that aren't video games.
Ellen: It's fun but yeah, we are on the Podcast Junkie discord server, so come hang out with us on there. We have our own channel and it's really fun. If you have an animal species that you want to hear us review, you could submit those to us either on social media or to me directly at my email address, which is ellen@justthezooofus.com, and a transcript of this episode will be available at our website, www.justthezooofus.com and our final note: thank you, Louie Zong for the use of your song "Adventuring" from your album Bee Sides.
Ellen: Thank you so much.
Ellen: We love it.
Ellen: Do I get my email address?
Ellen: No, just me.
Christian: Is christian@justthezooofus.com taken?
Ellen: The problem is that I don't trust you with it, because you will just send me really unsettling information throughout the day. You'll just, I'll be like, Oh, an email from christian@justthezooofus.com, I'll open it up and it'd be like, "you've eaten six tardigrades today," and I'll be like, great.
Christian: I'll program a timer that just...
Ellen: Sends me just really disturbing animal facts every five minutes. Can I unsubscribe from your weird animal fact newsletter?
Christian: Uh, legally, yes. You have to be able to unsubscribe, but anyway.
Ellen: Okay. Thanks. Bye.
Christian: Bye y'all.