The Weird, Wacky World of The Platypus

Posted by Jill Harness in Animal, Neatorama Only on July 13, 2009 at 11:55 pm

Long has the platypus been referred to as a “freak” or a “joke by God.” But darn it, these critters are awesome, interesting and unique. If anything, they’re really super animals and everyone else is just jealous. After all, they take a little bit of all kinds of good animals and make one excellent and one-of-a-kind family of animals.

Photo Via Urville Djasim [Flickr]

The Platypus Is Not A Fake
Many of you have likely never seen a platypus in your local zoo. In fact, because most zoos only like to take animal species that are 1)native, 2)endangered or 3)can be successfully bred in captivity, few zoos actually have these weird critters. Platypuses are only native to a small area of the world, are completely not endangered and only a few platypus babies have been born under human-induced conditions. Given its sparse appearance in zoos and its truly bizarre appearance and features, it’s not entirely uncommon to hear people jokingly refer to the platypus as an imaginary creature.

Now just imagine you’re living back in 1798, when Europeans first discovered the creature. The first things they sent to the UK to prove its existence were merely a pelt and a sketch of the animal. Is it any surprised that most British scientists believed the creature was fake? Scottish zoologist Robert Knox was so certain that the dead animal was a fake that he actually took scissors to its skin to look for stitches.

It’s Named For Its Flat Feet and Bird Snout
This is one critter that is very adequately named. Most of us know the platypus by its common name, which is Greek for “flat foot.” This title was the original name of the creature, but couldn’t be used for its genus name because it turned out that the ambrosia beetle already had the title in its Latin name.

In 1800, physiologist Johann Blumenbach described the platypus as Ornithorhynchus paradoxus, meaning “paradoxical bird snout.” His name later developed into the official title for the animal, Ornithorhynchus anatinus, or “duck-like.” This is why you so often hear the term “duck-billed platypus,” even though there is only one species of the animal.

Plural Problems
You may have noticed this article has so far only mentioned the animal in its singular form. That’s no accident, pluralizing the creature has proven to be quite a problem not for just laymen, but even to scientists. There is still no universally accepted plural to the word. Most people believe the plural form should be “platypi,” but the real Greek plural would be “platypodes.” Scientists stay away from both of those terms and prefer to use “platypuses” or just “platypus” no matter how many in question.

If you ever get in a heated debate with someone about the subject, just remember –you’ll probably be right no matter what you say.

Watch Out, They’re Poisonous
Yes, on top of being one of only five mammals to lay eggs, the platypus also had to distinguish itself by being one of the few mammals to be venomous as well.

While both male and females are born with spurs on their rear ankle, the female’s will fall off within her first year. The males will begin to produce a venom mix in a kidney shaped-area behind their spur. This venom contains three proteins that are only found in the platypus and is powerful enough to kill small animals, including dogs. The venom is not lethal to humans, but may cause severe pain that lasts for weeks.

Because the males are the only ones with venom and the poison production rises during breeding season, it is believed that the main function of the venom is to help the animals assert dominance over one another.

Platypus Women Are All Funky
The males have poisonous barbs. That doesn’t make the female any less strange than the males. The platypus females are lacking teats of any kind and though they have two ovaries, only the left one is functional. In order to feed their young without any nipples, the female platypus secretes its milk through pores in its skin that are collected in grooves on her abdomen, where the babies lap it up.

How their chromosomes choose the animals sex in the first place is also strange. Whereas most mammals have only two sex chromosomes, platypuses have ten! While they are mammals in most ways, these chromosomes seem much closer to the sex chromosomes of birds. Scientists still don’t know how their sex determination system works.

Image Via ccdoh1 [Flickr]

It’s Electric!
Ok, that’s a little misleading. The platypus isn’t electric, but it does hunt using electric fields generated by the muscular contractions of its prey. These animals and echinadas are known as monotremes and are the only mammals known to hunt by electric current.

The platypus has electroreceptors in the skin of its bill that can be used to help it search for fish while underwater. When they are hunting, they close their eyes, ears and nose completely and dig in the bottom of a stream with their bill. They then load up their cheeks with food until they get back to the surface. Unlike many other semi-aquatic mammals, platypuses cannot hold their breath very long –only about 30 seconds or so.

They’re Quite Popular in the Media
The general public didn’t really know much about platypuses until 1939, when National Geographic published an article about the challenge facing scientists who were trying to raise the animal in captivity.

Since then, many people have fallen in love with the creature and its become a popular mascot for a variety of different things, including Mac OS X, the Brisbane Expo ’88 and the 2000 Sydney Olympics. It also is featured on the back side of the Australian twenty cent coin. Green Day and Mr. Bungle have songs about the animal and it is also a popular characters on children’s TV shows including Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.

Source #1, #2, #3

 
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Neatorama Shop » Food & Drink » Offbeat Mints & Candies

The Stories Behind 10 Weird College Mascots

Posted by Stacy in Neatorama Only on February 28, 2009 at 7:24 pm

1. Cy the Cardinal, Iowa State University Cyclones. I have to put this one in here, ‘cause I’m an ISU alum and still like to tailgate it up during football season. So why is a cardinal the mascot of a team named after a force of nature? Because it’s kind of hard to make a mascot out of a tornado, Cy the Cardinal was chosen by students in 1954 to represent the school colors of cardinal and gold. The “Cyclones” moniker came in 1895, when the ISU football team trounced Northwestern and a reporter noted, “”Northwestern might as well have tried to play football with an Iowa cyclone as with the Iowa team it met yesterday.” Photo: ISU Alumni Association

2. Sammy the Banana Slug, University of California Santa Cruz. When the University decided to get into the NCAA game in 1980, it was decided that the school’s mascot would be the venerable sea lion. But students at UC Santa Cruz had grown attached to the colorful slugs that populated the redwoods on campus and had sort of adopted them as an unofficial mascot, so when the university announced their sea lion decision, students rallied together to lobby for the hermaphroditic Ariolimax columbianus. They won, and Sammy has been one of the most recognizable college mascots ever since.

3. The Boilermaker Special, Purdue University. Some background: the first reference to the Boilermaker name came in an 1890s newspaper article that called the Purdue team “Burly Boiler Makers,” which was a nod to their engineering roots. Even so, the university had no official mascot until 1937, when a student suggested a “mechanical man” or something similar as a mascot. The idea snowballed into building a train that could be driven like a car, which showed off the school’s prowess in the engineering realm while giving them a meaningful mascot at the same time. The train would then carry fans to other cities for games, and became known as Boilermaker Specials. Today, Purdue is on Boilermaker Special V and the X-Tra Special VI, a mini version that can go indoors. Purdue also has Purdue Pete, a human Boilermaker who carries around a hammer. Photo from Purdue Reamer Club.

4. Gladys the Fighting Squirrel, Mary Baldwin College in Virginia. The school’s mascot is the squirrel because Mary Baldwin had a squirrel in her family crest. I can’t find a single thing on why they named her Gladys. Any Neatoramanauts know the story? My research did turn up another interesting fact, though: Tallulah Bankhead was a Mary Baldwin grad.

5. Artie the Fighting Artichoke – Scottsdale Community College. The school needed a new mascot in the 1970s, but at the time, the student government was mad at the administration for steering funding toward athletics instead of academics. So they picked three unorthodox mascots and let the students vote. The choices? The Artichokes, the Rutabagas or the Scoundrels. Former college president Art DeCabooter says the artichoke won out because it’s got heart. Ha. Photo from JamesStephanieKayley

6. Boll Weevil, University of Arkansas Monticello. This name comes courtesy of former school President Frank Horsfall, who noted in 1925 that “the only gosh-darned thing that ever licked the South was the boll weevil.”

7. John Poet – Whittier College, California. This one is pretty easy – the school is named after poet and abolitionist John Whittier. The town the college is in is also called Whittier. Richard Nixon is probably Whittier’s most famous Poet (although it has lots of notable alumni, including the actress who played Kimmie Gibler on Full House) – he was an accomplished football, basketball and track runner for Whittier. Photo from Whittier.

8. Speedy the Geoduck, Evergreen State College, Washington. Surely an inspired mascot if I’ve ever heard one. The geoduck (gooey-duck) isn’t a waterfowl, as you might suspect, but a mollusk. It’s native to the Pacific Northwest, which explains why the college chose it as a mascot. Sort of. Also notable: Matt Groening was an Evergreen State Geoduck. Here’s Speedy doing his thing:

9. The Anchormen, Rhode Island College. I’m not even going to lie – I was totally picturing a mascot that looked similar to Ron Burgandy. It turns out by “Anchormen,” they mean “sailors.” Dang. As for the inspiration – one of the nicknames for Rhode Island is the Ocean State, so it really does make sense when you think about it. But I still prefer to think of a mascot running around in a suit and big hair, carrying a microphone and talking about his “guns.”

10. The Student Princes, Heidelberg University, Ohio. Prior to 1926, the team was known as the Cardinals. But then the university’s alumni director saw a movie called The Student Prince, which was about a prince who went to the Heidelberg University in Germany. He was inspired to start calling his students the same thing, and it caught on. At first it was just an unofficial, on-campus thing, but quickly grew to sports writers and the media.

Others that I was interested in but couldn’t find a good backstory on? The Long Beach Dirtbags (baseball only) and the Columbia College Claim Jumpers. What are your favorite weird mascots? I have a friend who was a Fighting Pretzel in high school.

 
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