The journal Science has devoted an entire issue to the platypuses. The table of contents reads like a Monty Python marathon.
"If it has a bill and webbed feet like a duck"; "Lays eggs like a bird or a reptile but still produces milk"; " A coat of fur like a mammal" are just some of the scintillating features in the platypussian treatise.
"Genetically", platypus Professor Duckbill Webfoot claims that the creature is a cousin to: "The dogopposumchicken found on peculiar ranches in Texas."
The nursing apparatus of the platypus seemed to have been studied with inordinate detail by Dr Watt Nohteats of the University of the South's Dolly Parton School of Mammary Glandular Research.
Dr Nohteats exclaimed: "The platypuses have no nipples!" The beasts apparently feed their young through osmosis of the abdominal wall.
Another anomalous finding in the Nature Platypus issue involved the sense of scent. As an aquatic creature the platypus relies on electro-sensitive receptors in its bill. But its mammalian heritage has also equipped it to with an extraordinary ability to sense odors. Apparently though the platypus lacks teats it can smell another platypussy from a mile away.
