This is what a platypus looks like when it hatches from the egg. Among mammals, only the platypus and the echida (“spiny anteater”) lay eggs. But they also have hair and give milk, so they’re mammals.
It still seems awfully Triassic to me.
It is rumored that Democrats hatch from square eggs.
Jambo! Mr. Nature here, and our safari today takes us to Australia and New Guinea in search of the spiny anteater, aka “echidna,” named for a creature in Greek mythology that was half-snake, half-woman.
These are really weird animals. For one thing, they and the duck-billed platypus are the only mammals that lay eggs. For another, they have the second-lowest body temperature among mammals, behind the platypus. And they’ve got a cloaca instead of separate reproductive and excretory organs. It’s sort of odd that they’re considered mammals at all. But they do have hair, and the babies, once hatched, are fed on milk from the mother’s body. Besides which, what else are we to call them?
As you might expect, they eat ants and termites; and aboriginal people sometimes eat them. No accounting for tastes. They look a lot like hedgehogs but aren’t related to them. They don’t look like platypuses, but those are their closest relatives.
God’s stuff–brought to you by a truly versatile Creator.
Hi, Mr. Nature here, with a critter a lot of folks have never heard of–the tenrec.
There are a bunch of different species of these little guys, living on Madagascar, Mauritius, and a few other out-of-the-way places in the Indian Ocean. And the thing about them is… are they really mammals?
We ask this because they maintain rather low body temperatures, and unlike all other mammals, but like birds and reptiles and amphibians, they have a cloaca instead of separate urine and genital tracts. That means one little hole for everything, as you’d find on a lizard or a canary. But at least they don’t lay eggs like the platypus or the spiny anteater (echidna).
God’s stuff is very complicated. We’ve been studying it for centuries and are still nowhere near to understanding all of it. We want all our living things sorted into nice, neat categories, and along comes some animal like the tenrec and muddies the waters. I mean, really, what’s a mammal doing with a cloaca?
King Solomon thought one could acquire wisdom by studying the intricacies and mysteries of nature. I’m sure he was right.
Hi, Mr. Nature here again!
This cute little animal trundling along is a spiny anteater, or echidna–and along with the more famous duck-billed platypus, it’s one of only a very few mammals that… well, lay eggs!
It’s warm-blooded, but not as warm-blooded as regular mammals. It feeds its babies (when they hatch) on breast milk; but it doesn’t have proper nipples. We begin to wonder if these really are mammals, after all.
Ignore the Darwinian fairy tale that comes packaged with this video. If it weren’t for the intense politics involved, Darwinism would’ve bitten the dust quite a while ago. We can’t help wanting to gain a better understanding of the world and how it works, so scientific theories come and go–except for the ones that get a political constituency.
But the echidnas and the platypuses know nothing of politics or scientific theories. They are as God created them, and so are we–complete with our God-given urge to always try to find out more.