Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. The duck-billed platypus feeds mainly on aquatic invertebrates that it catches in the water. It carries them back to the surface ...

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.

A duck-billed platypus swimming in the wild in Tasmania, Australia. — CHARLES J. SHARP/Wikimedia Commons They already have the bill of a duck, the tail of a beaver, lay eggs like reptiles and have ...