#Duck billed platypus evolution relatives code
That the genetic code of the platypus proved to be as bizarrely pastiched as its anatomy enhanced the popular appeal of the report, published in the journal Nature. But the platypus trumps its plush-toy costars by adding a kind of Dada prankishness to the equation, what with its bill that looks like a Charlie Chaplin shoe, the leathery, thumb-sized eggs it insists on laying, the Daffy Duck webfeet outfitted with venomous spurs and the milk that dribbles down its unnippled chest. One reason for the glowing reviews is that people love platypuses the way they love penguins and panda bears, as adorable, clumsy and nonthreatening creatures that remind them of kids playing dress-up. A “fantastic response,” said Jennifer Marshall Graves of the Australian National University in Canberra, a principal author on the report. When scientists announced last week that they had deciphered the complete genetic playbook for the duck-billed platypus, the public reacted with considerably more enthusiasm than it had accorded similar bulletins about the sequencing of, say, the mustard plant, the mosquito or the wild chicken.
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