Who is really "mixed-up," the duckbilled platypus
of Australia, or the evolutionists who don't know how to explain him?
Read, in this highly informative article, about one of the strangest creatures of all time;
called a "living fossil" and "a patchwork mammal that time forgot" by stunned evolutionists.
See for yourself how this furry little creature, "Old Flatfoot"
(which is what "platypus" means, and has the best "scientific" name available, it seems)
defies analysis by evolutionists.
"BIZARRE!" "Monstrous Misfit!" "UNBELIEVABLE!" "An impossible patchwork creature!" say evolutionists of the duckbill platypus.
If the little creature could talk, he would probably say the same thing about evolutionary theories!
Such are the shocked explicative evolutionists use when trying to describe and explain one of the "strangest" creatures alive today — the duckbill platypus.
Native to Australia, the platypus SEEMS to be a "patchwork" animal — because evolution likes to see some sort of comparison or interrelationship in all living things. In trying to relate the platypus to various other animals, evolutionists have not been able to stop short of at least four or five widely differing creatures — nowhere near each other in the purely fanciful "evolutionary tree."
The platypus, at first glance, looks like some strange little duck-like beaver-otter. It has webbed forefeet, like an otter, but with tough skin that extends beyond the toes for swimming, and retracts behind the toes for burrowing! The male of the species has a pit, or sharp, hollow spur on its hind foot. Like a pit viper, it carries a fairly poisonous venom.
But its tail is muscular, and fiat, shaped like a beaver's tail — still, even though looking like a beaver tail, it is covered with fur instead of SCALES! The appearance of the construction of the shoulder, or "shoulder girdle" is definitely reptilian.
And then there's the strange-looking "bill." But while ducks have a fairly hard and bony bill, the bill of the platypus is of a softer texture, like pliable skin, and is filled with highly sensitive nerves. You see, when a platypus dives to the bottom of his watery habitat to feed, he closes his eyes, and finds his way about with the most effective guidance system built into his "bill" — gobbling up worms and other marine foods.
Since the little animal "suckles" its young, it is "classified" as a mammal. But — astounding though it seems, it lays eggs! The eggs are "reptilian" in nature, being much like turtle's eggs in appearance, and covered with a skin-like texture, instead of a hard shell. And the little platypus doesn't really "suckle" its young, but actually secretes the milk from a mammary opening, which then drips from the hair of the underbelly, and the young lap the milk from the hair!
But in spite of the duck-like bill, beaver-like tail, snake-like eggs and venom fang, and with otter-like forefeet and young-suckling (but not really!) characteristics of the mammals, the little creature has only a single ventral opening for elimination, mating and birth — just like REPTILES! But the trouble is, he is warm-blooded, which reptiles are not! Further, he stores food in cheek pouches, like some mammals, but UNLIKE mammals, has no exterior ear, but only an opening into his hearing apparatus, which is located inside!
No WONDER evolutionists get "mixed-up" when they attempt to "properly place" the duckbilled platypus in their evolutionary tree!
In fact, early evolutionists chose the easiest way out — they simply refused to believe the creature existed. Others said it was a strange HOAX.
A Chinese Joke
Zoologists actually thought that some clever Chinese had SEWN TOGETHER parts of different animals. These patched-up animals — thought zoologists — had been sold to sailors as a joke.
Around 1798, an English naturalist, George Shaw, described one of these patchwork platypuses.
"Of all the mammals yet known it seems the most extraordinary in its conformation, exhibiting the perfect resemblance of the beak of a duck GRAFTED ON the head of a quadruped.
"So accurate is the appearance, that, at first view, it naturally excites the idea of some DECEPTIVE PREPARATION by artificial means.
"On a subject so extraordinary as the present, a degree of skepticism is not only pardonable, but laudable; and I ought perhaps to acknowledge that I almost DOUBT the testimony of my own eyes" (The Platypus, Harry Burrell, pages 17, 19 — a few words slightly changed to bring language up to date).
This creature was so strange, one scientist even dubbed it "paradoxus." Fortunately, naturalists didn't know that the platypus laid eggs and suckled its young at the time. Otherwise, sanity among that class of scientists may have been sharply curtailed.
Another anatomist, from Edinburgh, Scotland had this to say about the platypus:
"It is well known that specimens of this very extraordinary animal when first brought to Europe were considered by many to be IMPOSITIONS. They reached England by vessels which had navigated the Indian seas, a circumstance arousing the suspicions of scientists, aware of the monstrous impostures which the artful Chinese then practiced on European adventurers.
"These oriental taxidermists were quite notorious for their skill in constructing NONEXISTENT ANIMALS for sale to credulous seamen, such as the so-called 'eastern mermaid,' to be seen occasionally in curiosity shops to this day, consisting of the forepart of a monkey skillfully stitched to the tail of a fish" (Furred Animals of Australia, Ellis Troughton, page 4).
Platypus Finally Accepted
But it wasn't any Chinese joke! And it wasn't a mistake. Here was a creature — on the basis of "scientific" classification — which could either be mammal, bird or reptile! The platypus simply did not FIT the evolutionary scheme of things.
Even more amazing, there was NOTHING transitional about the platypus. He was highly intelligent and remarkably built to fit his environment.
Since a live or preserved specimen had never been seen, most zoologists "pooh-poohed" the idea that such a creature could exist.
But in the early 1800's the platypus won his place of honor as a bona fide inhabitant of the earth!
"The furor touched off by the written description of the platypus was revived and amplified a few years later when the British Museum received a pair of pickled specimens sent in a cask of spirits by Governor James Hunter of New South Wales, Australia.
"Dried skins had been received before, but these were the FIRST actual specimens to be seen outside the Antipodes.
"They were turned over to Everard Home, a distinguished anatomist, for dissection. Dr. Home's report left the members of the Royal Society in a state of stunned incredulity. He pronounced this egg-laying aquatic mammal OUT-RAGEOUS BUT GENUINE!" (Marvels and Mysteries of Our Animal World, Reader's Digest Publication, page 82)
Shock to Zoologists
Here's another admission of shock:
"Since the aim of science is to find order in the apparent chaos of the natural world, it came as a SHOCK to zoologists 160 years ago to confront a small furry animal with a beaver-like tail and a duck-like bill" (The Wonders of Life on Earth, Editors of Life, page 174).
No animal has given such a rise to so much controversy among scientists and evolutionists.
Another exclamation of shock appeared in a recent Australian publication:
"Australia is a land . . . of the oddest animal misfits on the face of the earth . . . platypuses, besides being almost UNBELIEVABLE at first sight, are perhaps the most adaptable creatures that ever walked, swam, or burrowed!
"They have absorbed EVERY MAD TRICK that evolution has handed out" (Walkabout, article, "He's Just an Old Fossil," Kendrick Howard, page 12).
Ah, now we're getting closer to the problem.
Why is he an "animal misfit"? Because it appears that the platypus has too many evolutionary innovations under one skin. Remember, there's nothing weird about a platypus. He's not a misfit. He isn't handicapped. He's not lame.
As a matter of fact, the platypus does quite well for himself.
But he bothers evolutionists!
Oh, they try to explain him away. But in the back of their heads, evolutionists must feel rather uneasy about the plague of platypuses.
Another book accuses the innocent platypus of this:
"The platypus of Australia and Tasmania fare) the MOST BIZARRE of living mammals" (Evolution, LIFE NATURE LIBRARY, page 60).
But what is really "bizarre" about the platypus?
Absolutely nothing. He's perfectly designed for his specific place in "nature," a fine swimmer, a good burrower, a hardy, happy, busy little creature who gazes balefully at the hysterical accusations of scientists whose cherished theories left no room for him. Can the platypus help it if evolutionists' theories were so weirdly inadequate they provided no space for his existence?
Think of it! The evolutionists believe even the various PARTS of the same animal are "unrelated," and yet they function together PERFECTLY!
Evolution demands we explain all life forms, no matter HOW "strange" appearing (and what could be stranger than an elephant, or a giraffe, or a rhinoceros, or a narwhal?) as having GRADUALLY evolved from common, early ancestors.
This gradual evolution, they insist, was guided by the ALL-POWERFUL pseudo-god spoken of in so many texts, "natural selection." This "natural selection" more or less AUTOMATICALLY determined which creatures were best suited to their environment — which could "adapt" or go through some sort of required "change" demanded by changing environment.
In attempting to portray these imagined "changes" and "adaptations," evolution offers views of strange "trees" — pictures of various "simple" life forms, followed by crustaceans, jellyfish and the like, branching off into plants, fishes, amphibians, land mammals; up the trees to various leaping mammals and to birds, or from the land mammals to man.
Did it ever occur to the average layman that all such attempts to "show" an evolutionary process by various "relationships" in such creatures is pure inference by analogy? And did it never occur to us that analogies PROVE NOTHING?
Does it never occur to the layman to demand evidence of the multiple THOUSANDS of "intermediate" species which could possibly SUBSTANTIATE such a fantastic story? That there would be infinitely more varieties of creatures with HALF-scales HALF-feathers than with whole ones? And especially, since these creatures (which did not exist) were "not so well equipped" to survive, that the fossil records should ABOUND with such evidence — when in reality it is utterly vacant?