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This One’s for Frank

Platypus Glow

Duck-billed, egg-laying platypuses just got a little weirder: It turns out their fur glows green and blue under ultraviolet (UV) light. Under visible light a platypus’s extremely dense fur — which insulates and protects them in cold water — is a drab brown, so the trippy glow revealed under UV light on a stuffed museum specimen was a big surprise. Biofluorescence — absorbing and re-emitting light as a different color — is widespread in fish, amphibians, birds and reptiles. But the trait is much rarer in mammals, and this is the first evidence of biofluorescence in egg-laying mammals, also known … Read more

SCIENCE: Funky Protein in Platypus Milk Could Beat Antibiotic Resistance

Platypus - pixabay

Posted for all of our platypus members… The milk of the platypus may contain a protein that can fight drug-resistant bacteria. Now, a new analysis of that protein reveals that its shape is as bizarre as the shape of the animal that excreted it. The protein has a never-before-seen protein fold, now dubbed the “Shirley Temple” thanks to its ringlet-like structure, according to researchers from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) and Deakin University in Australia. “Platypuses are such weird animals that it would make sense for them to have weird biochemistry,” study researcher Janet Newman of CSIRO … Read more

FOR READERS: Platypus or Tentacled Monster?

Platypus - Pixabay

FOR READERS Today’s reader topic comes from QSFer K.S. Trenten: Platypus or tentacled monster? Yes, it’s a silly topic. I’m just curious what we’ll all say. Let’s broaden this out a bit. What’s the wildest non-human or human-shifter type of character you’ve run across? And fave book featuring said type of character? Writers: This is a reader chat – you are welcome to join it, but please do not reference your own works directly. Thanks! Join the chat