Monday, July 18, 2011

Cool Animal Sounds: Platypus

Do you know what a platypus sounds like? Well, now you do:



Many residents in North America, where the beaver is a common inhabitant, often mistakenly believe these small, egg-laying animals are larger than they actually are. In fact, they are usually less than half the size of the average beaver! The males have venomous spurs and thus researchers have to be careful when handling them. They share many skeletal characteristics with reptiles, along with the whole laying eggs thing, and as such they show a clear relationship to the reptile-like ancestors and the modern placental mammals that we all know and love. Their hunting techniques are really quite fascinating. I much return to these little critters some time for an Interesting Animal profile.

The sort of cooing noise they make is now a staple on a Disney Channel cartoon called Phineas and Ferb, where the title characters have a pet platypus who doubles as a secret agent (and is, for some reason, teal in color). This, unfortunately, makes it even more difficult to find real platypus noises since everyone seems to want to try to mimic the character.

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