Talk:Platypus/Archive 1

message: http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200410/s1226827.htm This article references new information about platypus sex.  Apparantly they have 5 chromosomes to determine it.  On another note, this is the first I've contributed anything to wikipedia, so I didn't make the direct changes myself.
My, what a wonderful article!!! I used the info from the platypus to do a bio report and got an A! Wikipedia really does work! ---Christina — Preceding unsigned comment added by Chedcat (talk • contribs) 15:16, 14 November 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  New information 

message: There is sense in having a list of venomous mammals if there is only ONE of them??? It seems quite useless to me.
--Pinzo 00:06, 28 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  List of venomous mammals 

message: This bit of information seems to be irrelevant to an encyclopedic article on Platypuses and rather seems to be fancruft for a band.  I'm deleting it. 68.212.44.159 21:54, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Trevor Dunn

message: Doesn't this statement from the article:
"and is no longer found in the main part of the Murray-Darling Basin, probably because of the declining water quality brought about by extensive land clearing and irrigation schemes."
Contradict this statement further down in the article:
"Although not found in the west-flowing rivers of northern Queensland, it inhabits the upper reaches of rivers flowing to the west and north of the dividing ranges in the south of the state and in New South Wales and Victoria."
From personal experience only (no hard research here) I feel the latter statement is more correct as I have personally witnessed platypus in the Murrumbidgee River. Any thoughts?--Zig c 01:58, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Range 

message: Maybe I didn't read it properly but I couldn't find any reference in the text to the name of a young platypus - namely "puggle". The WP page for puggle lists this as the name of echidna and platypus young. It is mentioned on echidna but not here (as far as I can see). Usually I would have added it myself but given that it is a feature article I thought that it is more likely that I'm just missing it. Could someone else check this please? Witty lama 02:24, 11 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: And you were right to not add it: A baby platypus is not called a puggle, which seems to be a common misconception. There is no official name for a baby platypus, but a common suggested name is "platypup". - UtherSRG (talk) 02:30, 11 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Maybe I'm just too much of a descriptivist when it comes to language, but if their is no 'official' name for a young platypus but it is commonly called a 'puggle', then that makes 'puggle' the name for a young platypus. The English language has no 'official' body, so actual usage is the final decider. As worst you could say 'although puggle is commonly used to refer to a young platypus, biologists do not use the term'. Ashmoo 03:34, 21 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  puggle 

message: The text that says the platypus snout is not like the bird's beak is misleading. While they are indeed quite different, the platypus snout does open up. See this pic: [] Ashmoo 03:30, 21 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Platypus vs bird beak

message: I chopped these sentences out of the Mammalian evolution section as they seemed ambiguous and I didn't know how to resolve them.
In summary, the Platypus is one of the closest relatives of ancestral mammals, but not itself a link in the chain of mammalian evolution. 
How is 'closest relative' measured? And what does 'link in the chain of m.e.' mean?
Fossil evidence has shown that the Platypus ancestors were alive during the Cretaceous period, but it is not known exactly how the platypus has come to the creature it is today. 
The ancestors of every living creature alive today existed during the Cretaceous. Is the sentence trying to say that there were animals alive during the Cretaceous that shared features with the Platypus that are not shared by any other mammal? Or something else? 
Ashmoo 03:45, 24 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Evolution

message: :I was just wondering, does the Platypus have any Natural Predators?
:There seems to be nothing motioned about it in the article, so does that mean it has no predators?, it mentioned that the females seal up their burrows to keep the young safe, but safe from what?
:If it has no natural predators than that in itself should be mentioned.
:--Hibernian 16:08, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Predators