What Goes Around Is Coming Back And Haunting You

One of the world's strangest looking animals, the Platypus is often described as a living fossil due to its combination of mammalian and reptilian features and for an ancenstral lineage dating back about 110 million years.

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Platypus are one of the three extant species of the order Monotremata; warm-blooded, egg-laying mammals.

According to Aboriginal legend, the Platypus arose as the offspring of a female duck and a water-rat, explaining the inheritence of the "duckbill" and webbed feet combined with four legs and brown fur.

In describing the Platypus in 1799, British scientist Dr. George Shaw's initial reaction was that it was an elaborate hoax. He cut away at a pelt with scissors, expecting to find stitches attaching the bill to the skin.

Found only in Australia, the Platypus hunts primarily at night using electroreceptors in its bill to locate freshwater invertebrates such as shrimps, worms, yabbies, pea-shell mussels, aquatic insects, small frogs and fish eggs on which it feeds.

The Platypus is armed with a spur which can be used to inject a poison. Though not considered to be life-threatening to a healthy human, being spurred by a Platypus is particularly painful as the spurs are sharp and can be driven in with great force. Additionally, the poison triggers a severe pain reaction and can cause localized swelling.

Perhaps Green Day's Billie Joe Armstrong was once spurred by a Platypus thus inspiring the song's title.