Platypus

Platypuses are both bizarre looking and unusually adapted. They belong to a sub-group of mammals that lay eggs rather than giving birth to live young (monotremes). 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.

Scientific name: Ornithorhynchus anatinus

Rank: Species