How the Platypus and a Quarter of Fishes Lost Their Stomachs

July 14, 2023 7:01 PM

How the Platypus and a Quarter of Fishes Lost Their Stomachs. The platypus is an anthology of weirdness. It has a leathery duck-like bill, a flattened tail and webbed feet. The males have a venomous claw on their hind feet, and the females lay eggs. And if you look inside a platypus, you’ll find another weird feature: its gullet connects directly to its intestines. There’s no sac in the middle that secretes powerful acids and digestive enzymes. In other words, the platypus has no stomach.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries (26 comments total)

As I have often said, it is very clear to me that the platypus was generated by Gary Gygax out of the tables in the back of the 1st edition Dungeon Master’s Guide.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 7:15 PM on July 14, 2023 [12 favorites]

Egg on my face for thinking it had something to do with selection pressure and time.
posted by Earthtopus at 8:48 PM on July 14, 2023

The article is behind a paywall. Can someone access please make an archive or share a link that will work for the rest of us? Thanks!
posted by ElKevbo at 9:13 PM on July 14, 2023 [4 favorites]

The Pontiac Aztek of animals.
posted by azpenguin at 9:23 PM on July 14, 2023 [4 favorites]

Archive.is link. Anyone can do this.
posted by Rumple at 9:26 PM on July 14, 2023 [8 favorites]

Also, a SciSchow video about the same thing.
posted by fnerg at 9:31 PM on July 14, 2023 [1 favorite]

I hate when websites do that, let you read like the first paragraph and THEN tell you you have to subscribe, or at least give up your email address, to see the rest. I hate it more when these articles show up in Google because they feed Googlebot the full version of the content, and I become enraged when they use scripting or CSS tricks to do the content blocking, may Zeus destroy them. I have never subscribed to a site that's done this. I am determined never to do it. I might subscribe to a site that asks nicely. There's not enough money to subscribe to every site I'd like to read. (Here is yet another reminder that microtransctions are a scheme devised to solve this kind of problem, from years and years ago, but no one seems to have actually tried them.)
posted by JHarris at 10:10 PM on July 14, 2023 [16 favorites]

I have learned more about Australian life from chariot pulled by cassowaries than from anyone or anything else. Hats off to you.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 10:35 PM on July 14, 2023 [12 favorites]

Wow. The guts on these bastards.

Wait.
posted by brundlefly at 10:43 PM on July 14, 2023 [1 favorite]

In fifth or sixth grade, Australia became my favourite country in the world because I discovered the existence of the platypus. It might have been accidental on my part, because I can't recall it tied to any schooling but I might be wrong. Someone also gave me a big dictionary that year, and I started insulting any boys who insulted me by calling them a platypus or saying they were as deadly as belladonna. I am saddened that I never made it to Australia as planned. Nice post, chariot pulled by cassowaries, thank you!
posted by Bella Donna at 2:30 AM on July 15, 2023 [5 favorites]

Ogden Nash:

I like the duck-billed platypus
Because it is anomalous.
I like the way it raises its family
Partly birdly, partly mammaly.
I like its independent attitude.
Let no one call it a duck-billed platitude.
posted by lalochezia at 4:37 AM on July 15, 2023 [15 favorites]

This article really has it all: A science problem I don't understand (I mean, okay, so you still produce some enzymes in your intestines--but shouldn't you still kinda need that stomach? Shouldn't you?), a happy ending for a lungfish, and Ed Yong.
posted by mittens at 5:17 AM on July 15, 2023 [1 favorite]

I was hoping that “How Platypus Lost His Stomach” would turn out to be legend, like Platypus and Echidna were gambling, and Platypus won the Venetia’s spurs, but Echidna won Platypus’ stomach, which is why Echidnas have two.

(In the interest of full disclosure, I have no idea how many stomachs Echidnas have….)
posted by GenjiandProust at 6:03 AM on July 15, 2023 [7 favorites]

The buried the lede. "With the right genetic tweak, you can switch on these dormant programmes and produce chickens with teeth."

And that's how we got dinosaurs in 2042.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 6:21 AM on July 15, 2023 [2 favorites]

Man, that photo caption:

Green spotted pufferfish, stuffed platypus, and Horatio the lungfish

Horatio. Of course it's Horatio. They say the most dangerous place in a freshwater swamp, backwater or small river in West and South Africa is between Horatio and a camera.
posted by PlusDistance at 6:36 AM on July 15, 2023 [1 favorite]

Venetia’s spurs

Hey, autocorrect, venomous is a word....
posted by GenjiandProust at 6:40 AM on July 15, 2023 [3 favorites]

Hats off to you.

Perry the Platypus?
posted by graymouser at 7:25 AM on July 15, 2023

Surely, it was through diet and exercise like the rest of us.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 10:00 AM on July 15, 2023 [1 favorite]

> "With the right genetic tweak, you can switch on these dormant programmes and produce chickens with teeth."

This is dubious. Chickens come from a lineage that hasn't had teeth since the time of the dinosaurs. The same collection of mechanisms governs development across animals, but those mechanisms largely aren't specific to teeth or bone or whatever. And there was a paper about supposedly doing this in chickens some years back. A physiologist saw the picture and said, "Wait, those are mammalian teeth." They had grafted a bit of rat tissue to the chicken gum, and the rat tissue grew teeth because it was in a mouth. They were rat teeth.
posted by madhadron at 7:44 AM on July 16, 2023 [3 favorites]

Well, now I know what I'll have nightmares about tonight.
posted by mittens at 7:58 AM on July 16, 2023 [2 favorites]

They were rat teeth.

That seems like a long way to go for academic dishonesty.... Also, obligatory "You were so busy figuring out if you could...."
posted by GenjiandProust at 8:08 AM on July 16, 2023 [1 favorite]

Venetia’s spurs honestly sound great to me. I am disappointed to discover they are not a thing. Yet.
posted by Bella Donna at 3:26 PM on July 16, 2023 [1 favorite]

Every year or two I learn some entirely new and insane fact about the platypus. Last time it was that they detect prey by sensing the electricity generated by their muscle contractions. Now this. Where will it end?
posted by rifflesby at 3:34 PM on July 16, 2023 [1 favorite]

Venetia’s spurs
Hey, autocorrect, venomous is a word....
Oh, I just thought the Echidna was called Venetia. Too trusting, I guess.
posted by dg at 9:15 PM on July 16, 2023 [1 favorite]

Venetia’s spurs honestly sound great to me. I am disappointed to discover they are not a thing.

I’m pretty sure I saw Venetia’s Spurs play with Babes in Toyland at the 7th St Entry back in the day. Pity they broke up over that stomach thing.
posted by GenjiandProust at 5:01 AM on July 17, 2023 [4 favorites]

I quite enjoyed the P.S. tacked into the end of the article about Horatio the lungfish from the picture:

PS: The lungfish in the image at the top has a little story. Wilson bought him from a pet store in the UK and posted him to his lab in Portugal. He got lost in the post, and it took him a week to arrive. “I was a little worried when I opened up the package,” says Wilson. “But he’s a lungfish, so he was fine.” For no particular reason, Wilson named him Horatio.

posted by fire, water, earth, air at 12:35 AM on July 19, 2023 [2 favorites]