Animalia > Chordata > Mammalia > Monotremata > Ornithorhynchidae > Ornithorhynchus > Ornithorhynchus anatinus

Ornithorhynchus anatinus (Platypus; duck-billed platypus)

Synonyms: Platypus anatinus

Wikipedia Abstract

The platypus (Ornithorhynchus anatinus), also known as the duck-billed platypus, is a semiaquatic egg-laying mammal endemic to eastern Australia, including Tasmania. Together with the four species of echidna, it is one of the five extant species of monotremes, the only mammals that lay eggs instead of giving birth. The animal is the sole living representative of its family (Ornithorhynchidae) and genus (Ornithorhynchus), though a number of related species have been found in the fossil record.
View Wikipedia Record: Ornithorhynchus anatinus

EDGE Analysis

Uniqueness Scale: Similiar (0) 
46
 Unique (100)
Uniqueness & Vulnerability Scale: Similiar & Secure (0) 
58
 Unique & Vulnerable (100)
ED Score: 88.97
EDGE Score: 4.5
View EDGE Record: Ornithorhynchus anatinus

Attributes

Gestation [4]  17 days
Litter Size [4]  2
Litters / Year [5]  1
Maximum Longevity [4]  23 years
Nocturnal [1]  Yes
Snout to Vent Length [5]  17 inches (42 cm)
Water Biome [1]  Lakes and Ponds, Rivers and Streams
Weaning [4]  3 months 16 days
Adult Weight [2]  2.866 lbs (1.30 kg)
Female Weight [2]  1.984 lbs (900 g)
Male Weight [2]  3.748 lbs (1.70 kg)
Weight Dimorphism [2]  88.9 %
Diet [3]  Carnivore (Invertebrates), Piscivore
Diet - Fish [3]  20 %
Diet - Invertibrates [3]  80 %
Forages - Ground [3]  100 %
Female Maturity [4]  1 year 6 months
Male Maturity [4]  1 year 6 months

Ecoregions

Protected Areas

Emblem of

New South Wales

Prey / Diet

Paratya australiensis (Australian Paratya)[6]

Prey / Diet Overlap

Competing SpeciesCommon Prey Count
Maccullochella ikei (Clarence river cod)1

Consumers

Range Map

External References

Citations

Attributes / relations provided by
♦ 1Myers, P., R. Espinosa, C. S. Parr, T. Jones, G. S. Hammond, and T. A. Dewey. 2006. The Animal Diversity Web (online). Accessed February 01, 2010 at animaldiversity.org
♦ 2"Chapter 7. Platypus (Ornithorhynchus anatinus)", Sarah Bekessy, Julian Fox and Sarah Munks, Linking landscape ecology and management to population viability analysis, 2004, p. 152-172
♦ 3Hamish Wilman, Jonathan Belmaker, Jennifer Simpson, Carolina de la Rosa, Marcelo M. Rivadeneira, and Walter Jetz. 2014. EltonTraits 1.0: Species-level foraging attributes of the world's birds and mammals. Ecology 95:2027
♦ 4de Magalhaes, J. P., and Costa, J. (2009) A database of vertebrate longevity records and their relation to other life-history traits. Journal of Evolutionary Biology 22(8):1770-1774
♦ 5Nathan P. Myhrvold, Elita Baldridge, Benjamin Chan, Dhileep Sivam, Daniel L. Freeman, and S. K. Morgan Ernest. 2015. An amniote life-history database to perform comparative analyses with birds, mammals, and reptiles. Ecology 96:3109
♦ 6FARAGHER, R. A., GRANT, T. R. and CARRICK, F. N. (1979), "Food of the platypus (Ornithorhynchus anatinus) with notes on the food of brown trout (Salmo trutta) in the Shoalhaven River, N.S.W.", Australian Journal of Ecology, 4: 171–179.
♦ 7Gibson, D. I., Bray, R. A., & Harris, E. A. (Compilers) (2005). Host-Parasite Database of the Natural History Museum, London
♦ 8International Flea Database
♦ 9Species Interactions of Australia Database, Atlas of Living Australia, Version ala-csv-2012-11-19
Ecoregions provided by World Wide Fund For Nature (WWF). WildFinder: Online database of species distributions, ver. 01.06 Wildfinder Database
Abstract provided by DBpedia licensed under a Creative Commons License
Species taxanomy provided by GBIF Secretariat (2022). GBIF Backbone Taxonomy. Checklist dataset https://doi.org/10.15468/39omei accessed via GBIF.org on 2023-06-13; License: CC BY 4.0