Science: Birth of a Platypus

For the first time ever, a duck-billed platypus was born in captivity. The baby platypus was born to a pair named Jack & Jill in the Healesville animal sanctuary near Melbourne, Australia. Its birth was a big surprise to naturalists.

The platypus amuses most people by its funny name and its funny face (see cut). A very primitive link between mammals and aquatic birds, the platypus is a duckbilled, web-footed, molelike creature that nurses its young. It nests in a burrow in a river bank. The female lays small (¾ in. long), soft-shelled eggs.

The Healesville platypus was born after Curator David Fleay, as an experiment, gave Jill some nesting material. She promptly carried it into her burrow, soon afterward holed up for six days. When Fleay ventured to open the burrow last week, he found a fat baby, about nine weeks old, that uttered puppylike barks. Fleay is afraid to disturb the burrow further, but he thinks there may be another baby inside, because a platypus almost always lays two eggs.