“There is a python with a platypus in its mouth,” Elliot Bowerman’s friend called out as the two walked through a forest in Queensland, Australia. Sure enough, in the nearby creek, a two-meter-long ...

What on earth is a platypus? Even its name seems strange. When Europeans first heard the startling news of a newly discovered creature called the “platypus,” most of them thought it was just a joke.

With a beaver’s tail, webbed feet, and a duck’s bill, platypuses are one of the world’s strangest-looking creatures. They are such an unusual mammal that the first scientists to study them believed ...