Home: Streams, rivers, and lakes of Eastern Australian coastal regions
Description: Short, dense dark-brown fur, 2 inch wide bill, hairless, webbed feet, flat, furry tail, up to 2 foot long body
The platypus seems weird to people because it lays eggs and is a mammal, but really it's just a creature that's just very specialized to do what platys do best -- swim, eat, and burrow! Living on the banks of bodies of water, the platypus burrows 50 foot long tunnels and uses its webbed feet to doggy-paddle around. The bill is a stream-lined nose and mouth for sniffing and snuffling up pond-bottom delicacies like shrimp! Perfectly designed for underwater life, the platypus has two layers of fur -- the first is short and dense and never lets water through to the skin! The second is longer and is the layer of fur that gets wet. The flat furry tail stores fat for the long cold winter in freezing waters.
The platypus closes its eyes and ears underwater! How does it manage to find its food in the murky depths below? With an amazing touch-sensitive beak! Platypus bills aren't like bird bills -- they're soft, flexible cartilage -- like the stuff our noses are made of!
Like a duck-billed cowboy, platypus males have spurs on their hind feet that deliver a poisonous venom with a swift kick! A platypus sting is powerful enough to make people sick and kill a dog!
Mama platypus lays usually two eggs less than an inch long that stick to the fur on her belly. The babies bust their way out with an egg tooth, and then attach themselves to mom's belly-hairs. Milk oozes from glands nearby that soak the fur and the babies suck it up!
... The platypus bill is a finely tuned instrument with approximately 850,000 electrical and tactile receptors, which are far more sophisticated than those found in fish and can detect any movement in the murky water.
From: Platypus
So here we have an animal with some features seen only in mammals, some features seen only in reptiles, some features seen only in birds, some features seen only in snakes and some features seen only in fish!
So this is the question for evolutionists: where did all the varied features of the platypus descend from? According to evolution they had to have descended gradually from one single species having at least the ancestry of these features. So let's see, what species ancestral to the platypus had the following features:
1. the mammary glands.
2. the egg laying.
3. 3 earbones.
4. the poison spur.
5. the duck like bill.
6. the webbed feet.
7. the toothless mouth.
8. the electro-sensor in the bill.
9. the fur.
10. the cloaca.
11. the ability to vocalize and make different sounds.
Hope I do not have to wait for 150 years for an answer!