alt title(s): Everythings Better With Platypus; Everythings Better With Platypi
Much like
Monkeys,
Penguins and
Pandas, the duck-billed platypus has achieved a certain level of popularity.
The platypus is probably the most iconic aquatic Australian animal; many advertisements for pools, swimming lessons and fishing gear will use one. It is also used on the Australian 20-cent piece.
Some believe that the platypus proves God has a sense of humor, or he's a fucking psycho. The reasons are myriad. This is an animal that, upon being sent to a British natural history museum to catalog, was believed to be a taxidermist's prank. It looks like a beaver crossed with a mole with a duck's bill added for laughs. They belong to a group of mammals known as Monotremes, a group consisting of it and the echidna, which means they lay eggs. Additionally, they're an offshoot of mammals that evolved before mammaries evolved, so while they produce milk, they have no dedicated gland for it, let alone nipples, so they simply...
sweat out the milk. They also have ten sex chromosomes, where in most mammals there're simply two (XX and XY). And their duck-bill? It's actually quite soft, and it acts as an electrical receptor. See, platypus eyes aren't too useful, especially underwater, so they use an electrolocation system in their bills to hunt shrimp and other aquatic invertebrates. Sharks have a similar sense,
in case they weren't scary enough.
And to top it off, they're poisonous. Yup, male platypi have poisonous spurs on their feet, and while the poison isn't lethal to humans, the cocktail of venom will usually incapacitate people, and can cause you to be in
excruciating, incapacitating pain for months. And to top it off, morphine has no effect on said pain. So it won't kill you, it'll just make you wish it did.
So, in short, it's easy to see how humans can become so interested in this goofy-looking creature. Odd appearance, cool features, and the ability to cripple you if you get stupid. What better metaphor for
Australia? And it's an
Inherently Funny Word. And they
swim weirdly
.
Plus, if you want to talk about them in the plural, expect to confound linguists until the end of time. Is it
platypi?
Platypusses?
''Platypeople''? it's 'Platypodes'
Examples:
Anime and Manga
- Eureka Seven, the Axe Crazy mecha pilot girl has a pet platypus.
- …That's a platypus? It looks more like a particularly dull sheep. Made of depleted uranium.
- Despite its name, the popular Pokemon Psyduck is clearly a platypus that is as confounded by itself as we are. Interestingly, it evolves into something resembling a Kappa.
Comics
Film
- The movie Dogma opens with a disclaimer that religious people who may be offended by the film look at the duck-billed platypus and consider that God must have a sense of humor. This is followed by another disclaimer, apologizing to the "noble" platypus.
Literature
- Umberto Eco wrote a book called Kant and the Platypus: Essays on Language and Cognition. He noted in the very beginning that Immanuel Kant had nothing really to do with platypus, but it's just a good title.
- In The Last Continent, the wizards, stuck in the past Fourecks decide to help the local god in creating new species, by drawing a duck on a rock, but can't really reach consensus on what a duck looks like. The Platypus results from their squabble, playing to the old joke that the Platypus is a duck designed by a committee.
- In Dot and the Kangaroo, the platypus is described as "the wisest animal in the bush" and helps Dot find her way home. He and his wife also sing a song based on their latin name.
- The Tortall Universe book In the Realms of the Gods has a platypus - er, duckmole god as a fairly major character. His name is Broad Foot.
Live Action TV
Music
- Green Day doesn't seem to share this opinion, judging by the band's song "Platypus (I Hate You)".
Real Life
- An interesting fact: During World War II, Winston Churchill decided he'd like some brought to the United Kingdom. this required special facilities being fitted out on a ship, and navigation halfway round the world in a war. nevertheless, this was attempted, and the ship made it all the way to the mid Atlantic, when it was discovered that the measures taken to protect the animals didn't completely mitigate the effect of anti-submarine depth charges, and they died a few days before arriving.
- Kinda sums it up with this Fun T Shirt [1]
- Sanrio has tried at least three times to launch a platypus character for the Hello Kitty universe, but it's never taken off.
- Robin Williams is also no fan of them. In Live At The Met, he speculates that the platypus came about when God got stoned.
- The trophy for the Oregon-Oregon State football rivalry game is the Platypus Trophy, because the platypus has characteristics of both schools' mascots, Oregon's duck and Oregon State's beaver.
- The official emblem of the Australian Federal Police is the platypus. The AFP official web site spends several paragraphs explaining why the platypus symbolises all the best qualities of the force, before finally admitting that it might also have something to do with the literal English translation of "platypus" being "flatfoot".
Theater
- The musical Prozak and the Platypus has a platypus as a main character.
Video Games
- Platypus venom is mentioned in both Persona 3 and Persona 4.
- Although they're mentioned as having "poisonous claws" rather than venomous spurs.
- Rex and Elle, from the Aussie videogame/exercises in playful stereotyping Ty The Tasmanian Tiger series.
- Mio Sasuga's familiars
- Infocom's Wishbringer had platypus royalty (they're also given a cameo in Beyond Zork).
Web Original
- Very early in The Descendants, a villain breaks into a zoo, steals a platypus, and uses the platypoison to cripple another character and steal her body.
- There is a website called Fred the Monkey where the local Ensemble Darkhorse is Clydex the Platypus. Who never says anything other than "I'm a platypus." EVER.
- Chaz "Platypus" Villette from Shadow Unit: bizarre and hard to explain even compared to others with freaky mutant powers, unexpectedly dangerous, looks sort of like he was put together from spare parts, and capable of eating half his body weight in a day. Not too much of a stretch, really.
Webcomics
Western Animation
