Agreed! The platypus sounds like some sort of global prank.
It’s sort of like a beaver, but it has a duck bill. Oh! It lays eggs like a duck, too. Their feet suspiciously resemble those of an otter. And get this… they’re also venomous!
But they’re super cute, and they are real, which is awesome 
The platypus is Mr. Road’s favorite animal because it defies all attempts to categorize it, LOL.
@Fonduie - so true! 
That island evolution, I guess…
My favourite Australian animal is the quokka - too much cuteness!
The platypus was originally a cryptid. People didnt think it was real because its was so weird. Its one of the ones that was proven… Next is Bigfoot.
Their little faces! They’re adorable
Quite true BUT when I went last time I get off the plane into my friends car we’re driving down and the news was filled with some story of the katipo! I was like SEE it knew I was coming!!! mmaaahh. spiders!!!
I do love the taniwaha art though and the stories of its protection - I just can’t hop on board with its a big eel LOL
I use a platypus case study when I teach biological classification. It was difficult for early European scientists to classify the platypus into the existing system because the internal anatomy is just as bizarre as the outside. The female reproductive tract has both avian and mammalian characteristics. They also don’t have nipples. Milk just seeps out of the skin, like sweat. The baby licks it up. Biologists had to create a new category.
haha - but they are really quite rare - an encounter would make the news it’s so unusual! And yeah, the big eels are scary, but people in this district would say that’s nothing compared to a real taniwha.
Platypuses are fantastic!! It’s not as bizarre as the platypus, but did you know the kiwi has several mammalian characteristics (body temperature, marrow-filled legbones, some internal features, whiskers)? Evolution and the natural world are just amazing - there always seems to be something that challenges our ideas about the world.
So there’s always hope there could be something new and undiscovered out there …
My mind was blown when science determined dinosaurs were not in fact scaley, but more birdlike with feathers! So, ostrich/emu rather than komodo dragon. Wow.
I’ll admit that my interest in cryptids is where they bleed into natural history and folklore, especially since so many extinct and unidentified species still aren’t known to science, and we keep learning more about the ones we’ve found (like feathery dinos)!
Did you know that the kraken was given a scientific name, Microcosmus marinus by Carl Linnaeus?
I also just read an article that in the 1800s, people still believed Mammoths still lived somewhere in North America (though really they only missed the last of them by a few thousand years) and almost every northern indigenous culture has a story about them, generally either returning or moving underground or into the sea. (“Unearthing the Mammoth” from Orion Magazine)
*breathes heavily in nerd
So cool! Nature is so much more colourful and interesting and complicated than we imagine.
I love it! Now I want a proper scientific illustration of a kraken.
I’ve started to work on my list and the questionaire. Work will be interesting the next few weeks, so I’ll need/want a creative outlet. I’ve added the Skvader and Storsjöodjuret to my list. Of course I need to ask for the local to me cryptids 
That was the total disconnect for me! I was like huh? not sure I’m into that, but, really I am when it comes to some and they tend to be those with more folklore tales behind them that in my head were confused with just that and not necessarily thinking Cryptoid.
I had to look them both up, but I really enjoyed the Storsjöodjuret! Ok it’s chosen it will be interesting to see what is made using this is inspiration!
Maybe trolls brewing a beast? Maybe a sleeping serpent forever enchanted by runes!
They both look fun, especially the lake serpent!
With all these spooky stories, I felt the need to make us a campfire. (Just pretend the fire is not dangerously close to the tent.)
So my family has sort of a cryptid/urban legend. My auntie had 13 kids, rumor had it she had a 14th and it had a square head and she was so ashamed of it she kept it in the attic in a birdcage wrapped with chains and if you misbehaved The Square Headed Baby would come to get you. You’d know by the chains rattling. Several family members claim they’ve seen the baby in the attic but I’ve never been brave enough to look. It was enough to scare us kids into behaving/eating our veggies/going to bed on time, etc…
What.The.Heck.?
That is straight up some Grimms Fairy tales, type of jenk right there. Sounds like they REALLY did not want y’all up in that attic.
You have officially earned your campfire badge!
@JoyfulClover I adore your hoopla!
Wow, that is something! Our grandparents warned us away from Mr. Crabapple’s house (the gardening shed probably full of dangerous tools that was also close to the creek bank), and only when I was an adult did I learn that the risk of him chopping off your head with an axe was my brother’s personal embellishment to the story. 
There should be a whole other category for family cryptids that exist to cause good behavior in children.
