“Consider the platypus. In a land of improbable creatures, it stands supreme. It exist in a kind of anatomical nether world halfway between mammal and reptile. Fifty million years of isolation gave Australian animals the leisure to evolve in unlikely directions, or sometimes scarcely to evolve at all. The platypus managed somehow to do both.”-Bill Bryson

Australia has a host of really odd creatures.

Some are only found Down Under such as kangaroos, wallabies, wallaroos, and certain tree-possums.

There is one animal that tops the oddity list and this has to be the duckbill platypus.

The platypus is a monotreme, an order of the only mammals that lay eggs. There are just the platypus and four species of echidnas in existence today in this order.

The platypus seems to be put together from some surplus animal parts: the bill of a duck, body of an otter, the tail of a beaver, and the webbed feet of a goose. Who knew what early scientists made of the platypus?

I hoped to get a chance to see this mammalian oddity in Queensland.

I ordered a platypus model to use as a sketching tool. I think I might bring this long with me in my carry-on. An Aussie mascot.