Aphelion

It's official - the platypus is weird<br><br>Scientists from the Australian National University have proved what many have thought for years - platypuses are really weird.<br><br>In the international Nature journal today they report a platypus has five chromosones determining sex, not one - like the rest of the species in the world.<br><br>Professor Jennifer Graves says platypus have five X and five Y chromosomes, and when sperm are made it gets even stranger.<br><br>"What we've discovered is that these five Xs and five Ys line up in a great big long chain, that go XY XY XY XY XY XY, and then all the X chromosomes move to one pole, and all the Y chromosomes move to the other," she said.<br><br>Professor Graves says there is another unexpected finding.<br><br>"One end of the chain looks like human sex chromosomes but the other end of the chain looks like bird sex chromosomes, so the chain is actually linking a very ancient system of sex determination in birds and probably reptiles too," she said.<br><br>The unique status of the Australian mammal is now unassailable.<br><br>*** Hmm. Sounds like an extraterrestrial life-form to me. The devolved descendants of explorers who crashed on earth millions of years ago, come to a humiliating end ...?<br><br>Robert M.

"Just be careful if you pick up a male, though.  The little buggers are poisonous. "


Yes, that's been my experience too...

<br>Somehow I suspect that Kate's husband doesn't read this lettercol. Or does he? (Dum dum daaaaaaaa ...)<br><br>Tune in tomorrow when Kate says, "Only kidding, dear!"<br><br>Robert M.

It's a lucky thing that we have some extant monotremes in the modern world...

<br><br>Let's see, a trireme was a galley with three rows of oars -- or was it three sails?  So a monotreme would have one row of oars -- or one sail?  Boy, platypuses (platypi?) are even weirder than I imagined.<br><br>Robert M.

Yeah, metronomes. These are little bearded guys who sit at trendy inner-city cafes and live in upstairs apartments.

Dan, you'd better hurry with the November issue. Things can only get worse from here :).

<br><br>Didn't somebody write a story called Metrognome? (Or am I thinking of 'A Gnome Named Gnorm' or worse, 'A Gnome in Central Park'?)

Another odd thing about the platypus, they have been shown to be able to sense tiny electrical fields. As I recall from a show on TLC or Discovery, a blindfolded platypus was able to sense a (nearly discharged) AAA battery- reacting to it as if it were one of the tiny animal that they feed upon. A for-real sixth sense!
Dan

<br>Electric eels do something similar, don't they? Use the electrical field they generate like short range radar (as well as a potent defense)?<br><br>So -- if you put an electric eel near a platypus, would the platypus think it was closing in on The Big Rock Candy Mountain?<br><br>Robert M.<br>