Mammals · plate 17 of 60
Platypus
Ornithorhynchus anatinus
A mammal that lays eggs and has questions for nobody.
Only 0.4% of people are Platypuses. (estimated)
If you're a Platypus
You are odd, and comfortably so. The platypus lays eggs, carries venom, hunts with its eyes shut and senses electricity with its bill; you also have a set of skills nobody else seems to need and a deep indifference to fitting a category. You keep to yourself, work at night, and solve things in your own way.
When the first platypus specimen reached London in 1799, the naturalist who described it checked for stitches, suspecting someone had sewn a duck's beak onto a mole.
The Platypus as a spirit animal
You don't fit the form, and you stopped minding long ago. You are curious, private, and quietly very competent at a set of things nobody else does. The flaw is that you are so far outside the usual categories that people don't know how to help you, and you don't ask. The committee that classified you took decades. You were busy at the time.
Grounded in how the species actually lives; nothing borrowed from anyone's tradition. Why we put it that way.
How to get along with a Platypus
Do
- Let them do it their way; there is no other way for a platypus.
- Meet them at dusk, near water, briefly; that is the whole social calendar.
- Take their odd skills seriously; electroreception looks absurd until it finds dinner.
Don't
- Don't try to classify them; it took science decades and they weren't consulted.
- Don't pick one up without checking the back ankles.
When it goes wrong: A handled male platypus kicks with venomous spurs; the fix is not handling the platypus.
The Platypus in a relationship
You are private in love and surprisingly tender. Platypuses meet briefly in the water, and the female then builds a long burrow, lays her eggs, and curls around them for about ten days before nursing the young for months. You don't do public affection. You do build an exceptional burrow.
Field notes
Every animal is placed on six personality traits derived from how the species lives. Your answers are placed on the same six, and the closest animal wins. How the scoring works
- Sociability
- 1
- Boldness
- 2
- Energy
- 5
- Curiosity
- 7
- Devotion
- 7
- Roaming
- 1
- The platypus is one of only five living mammals that lay eggs; the other four are echidnas.
- A male platypus has a venomous spur on each hind ankle; the venom is not lethal to humans but the pain is severe and can last for weeks.
- The platypus hunts underwater with its eyes, ears and nostrils closed, finding prey with electroreceptors in its bill, and it has no stomach.
Platypuses in literature
- The Platypus — Dot and the Kangaroo, Ethel C. Pedley (1899)
- The Duck-billed Platypus — A Child's Primer of Natural History, Oliver Herford (1899)
- Platypus anatinus — The Naturalist's Miscellany, George Shaw (1799)
Characters from public-domain works. Company, not a verdict.
Closest personalities
The animals whose profiles sit nearest to the Platypus's. If you got Platypus, one of these was probably your runner-up.
Other mammals
WolfRed FoxBrown BearPolar BearLionTigerLeopardCheetahElephantGiraffeHippopotamusGorillaOrangutanSlothKoalaKangarooOtterBeaverBadgerRaccoonHedgehogBatCamelDolphinSperm Whale
Among the 60
The Illustrated Magazine of Art, Alexander Montgomery (publisher) (1853). Public domain, viacommons.wikimedia.org.All credits
