Some pictures of Diana and Myself, where we now live and places around us, things that we find interesting, amusing or just plain weird!
Monday, 1 March 2010
I Finished The Last Post By Saying That I Had Forgotten What We Were Talking About On Saturday,
well thanks to Mike who I called on Sunday I found out as he has a better memory than me, we were talking about Monotremes, and how strange the two families of the group were, Monotremes are the only group of mammals that lay eggs, i.e. they are oviparous, laying one to three eggs, they have a single posterior opening, the cloaca, for excretion and reproduction, the name monotreme means one-holed I had thought that there were just two examples, the Platypus (Ornithorhynchus anatinus) and the short-beaked Echidna (Tachyglossus aculeatus), but it appears that the Echidna has three living species, with two known from the fossil record,as a group fossil monotremes are scarce, the oldest, estimated to be about 100 million years old, was found in New South Wales, Australia, finding a fossil monotreme in Argentina suggested that monotremes once occurred across Gondwanaland (Antartica, Australia and South America), today, monotremes occur only in Australia and New Guinea,
it is a joke, right? when the first Platypus was shipped to Britain from Australia, people thought it was a joke and that someone had sewn a duck's bill to a mammal's body, even when accepted as real, it was thought to be a bird or a reptile as it laid eggs, also nobody could explain why some of the examples had a poisonous spur on it's hind foot, it is one of the few venomous mammals, it was found that only the male Platypus has a spur on the hind foot, it delivers a venom capable of causing severe pain to humans,
the second family is the Echidna (or affectionately known as the Spiny Anteater) is a primitive mammal, it lives in both Australia and New Guinea, I must admit I thought both families only occurred in Australia, but the Echidnas also appear in New Guinea, it to is a Monotreme, a mammal laying eggs and suckling it's young, now this is something else I did not know what is a baby Echidna called? a puggle, so now we all know what we were talking about that was interesting on Saturday.
we were talking about Monotremes, and how strange the two families of the group were, Monotremes are the only group of mammals that lay eggs, i.e. they are oviparous, laying one to three eggs, they have a single posterior opening, the cloaca, for excretion and reproduction, the name monotreme means one-holed I had thought that there were just two examples, the Platypus (Ornithorhynchus anatinus) and the short-beaked Echidna (Tachyglossus aculeatus), but it appears that the Echidna has three living species, with two known from the fossil record,
as a group fossil monotremes are scarce, the oldest, estimated to be about 100 million years old, was found in New South Wales, Australia, finding a fossil monotreme in Argentina suggested that monotremes once occurred across Gondwanaland (Antartica, Australia and South America), today, monotremes occur only in Australia and New Guinea,
it is a joke, right? when the first Platypus was shipped to Britain from Australia, people thought it was a joke and that someone had sewn a duck's bill to a mammal's body, even when accepted as real, it was thought to be a bird or a reptile as it laid eggs, also nobody could explain why some of the examples had a poisonous spur on it's hind foot, it is one of the few venomous mammals, it was found that only the male Platypus has a spur on the hind foot, it delivers a venom capable of causing severe pain to humans,
the second family is the Echidna (or affectionately known as the Spiny Anteater) is a primitive mammal, it lives in both Australia and New Guinea, I must admit I thought both families only occurred in Australia, but the Echidnas also appear in New Guinea, it to is a Monotreme, a mammal laying eggs and suckling it's young, now this is something else I did not know what is a baby Echidna called? a puggle, so now we all know what we were talking about that was interesting on Saturday.
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