--- title: The platypus and the echidna: mammals that lay eggs — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «The platypus and the echidna: mammals that lay eggs», a lesson of the biology course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: Mammals are animals with fur or hair that feed their babies milk, and almost all of them give birth to live babies, bu --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/43-platypus-and-echidna/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [Biology](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/) / The platypus and the echidna: mammals… # The platypus and the echidna: mammals that lay eggs Lesson 43 of the biology course of Mova's primary school: 17 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: [the lesson at school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/school-run/biology/43-platypus-and-echidna/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/43-platypus-and-echidna/0/) — Mammals are animals with fur or hair that feed their babies milk, and almost all of them give birth to live babies, but five strange Australian and New Guinean animals lay eggs instead. - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/43-platypus-and-echidna/1/) — These egg-laying mammals are called monotremes: the platypus, with a duck-like bill, and four kinds of spiny echidna; they kept an ancient way of having babies that the other mammals lost long ago. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/43-platypus-and-echidna/2/) — When the first platypus skin reached Britain around 1799, a scientist looked for stitches, sure that a joker had sewn a duck's bill onto a furry animal, like a toy made from bits of two other toys. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/43-platypus-and-echidna/3/) — In cartoons the platypus is a funny duck-beaver that quacks; the real one never quacks, hunts with its eyes shut by feeling electricity, and the males carry venom. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/43-platypus-and-echidna/4/) — Mammals have fur or hair and feed their babies milk; it is a myth that all mammals give birth to live young, because monotremes lay eggs. - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/43-platypus-and-echidna/6/) — A platypus dives with its eyes, ears and nostrils closed and finds shrimps, worms and insect larvae with tens of thousands of sensors in its soft bill that feel movement and faint electricity. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/43-platypus-and-echidna/7/) — A mother platypus lays usually 1 to 3 small leathery eggs, often 2, and curls round them in a riverbank burrow for about 10 days; she has no nipples, and the babies lap milk from patches of skin. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/43-platypus-and-echidna/8/) — A male platypus has a hollow spur on each back ankle that injects venom, very painful to people and able to kill a dog; males use it mostly against other males in the breeding season; never handle a wild platypus. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/43-platypus-and-echidna/9/) — In 2020 scientists found that platypus fur glows blue-green under ultraviolet light; nobody yet knows whether the glow is useful to the animal. - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/43-platypus-and-echidna/10/) — Around 1799 the naturalist George Shaw checked the first platypus skin for stitches, and egg-laying was finally proved only in 1884. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/43-platypus-and-echidna/11/) — A platypus stuffs food from the riverbed into its cheek pouches and chews it at the surface with hard horny pads, because adults have no teeth; it must come up to breathe, so filling the pouches saves trips. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/43-platypus-and-echidna/12/) — An echidna is covered in spines that are thick hairs; it walks slowly and cannot run from danger, so when frightened it curls into a ball or digs straight down until only its spines show. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/43-platypus-and-echidna/13/) — An echidna has no teeth and catches ants and termites with a long sticky tongue after breaking into their nests with strong claws. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/43-platypus-and-echidna/14/) — A mother echidna lays one soft egg straight into a pouch; after about 10 days a baby the size of a jellybean, called a puggle, hatches and drinks milk there; when its own spines start to grow, the mother moves it out to a burrow. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/43-platypus-and-echidna/15/) — Echidnas can survive bushfires by hiding in burrows or logs and lowering their body temperature and heartbeat, a state called torpor; their normal body temperature is only about 32 degrees, and because keeping warm burns food, a cooler body needs less food. - [16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/43-platypus-and-echidna/16/) — Other mammals give birth: a hedgehog looks a bit like an echidna but has live babies, and a kangaroo gives birth to a tiny live baby that grows in its pouch. - [17](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/43-platypus-and-echidna/17/) — Attenborough's long-beaked echidna was filmed alive for the first time in 2023, after decades with no proof that it still existed. - ← previous: [The capybara: the calmest animal, friend of crocodiles?](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/42-the-capybara/) - next →: [The axolotl, the tardigrade and the mantis shrimp](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/44-axolotl-tardigrade-mantis-shrimp/) - ↑ back to [Biology](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/)