Platypus

Many people call platypus duckbill because this animal has a bill like duckbill.
Platypus is a native Tasmania and southern and eastern Australia.
Platypus has a flat tail and webbed feet. Its body length is 30 to 45 cm and covered with a
thick, and woolly layer of fur. Its bill is detecting prey and stirring up mud. Platypus’ eyes
and head are small. It has no ears but has ability to sense sound and light.Platypus lives in
streams, rivers, and lakes. Female platypus usually dig burrows in the streams or river banks.
The burrows are blocked with soil to protect it from intruders and flooding. In the other hand,
male platypus does not need any burrow to stay. The female platypuses lay eggs is nearly
unique, that inside the burrows.

Females seal themselves inside one of the burrow's chambers to lay their eggs. A
mother typically produces one or two eggs and keeps them warm by holding them between
her body and her tail. The eggs hatch in about ten days, but platypus infants are the size of
lima beans and totally helpless. Females nurse their young for three to four months until the
babies can swim on their own

Platypuses hunt underwater, where they swim gracefully by paddling with their front
webbed feet and steering with their hind feet and beaverlike tail. Folds of skin cover their
eyes and ears to prevent water from entering, and the nostrils close with a watertight seal. In
this posture, a platypus can remain submerged for a minute or two and employ its sensitive
bill to find food.

These Australian mammals are bottom feeders. They scoop up insects and larvae, shellfish,
and worms in their bill along with bits of gravel and mud from the bottom. All this material is
stored in cheek pouches and, at the surface, mashed for consumption. Platypuses do not have
teeth, so the bits of gravel help them to "chew" their meal.

On land, platypuses move a bit more awkwardly. However, the webbing on their feet retracts
to expose individual nails and allow the creatures to run. Platypuses use their nails and feet to
construct dirt burrows at the water's edge.
Solenodon (family Solenodontidae),

Solenodon is either species of large shrew like mammal found only on the islands of Cuba
and Hispaniola. Solenodons have a chunky body with short, stocky legs. Various skin glands
give it a goatlike odour. The elongate head has very small eyes and tapers to a long, flexible
snout adorned with long whiskers. Its saliva is toxic and enters the prey as the solenodon
bites with its incisors. Solenodons weigh 800 to 1,100 grams and have a body 28 to 39 cm
long and a shorter tail of 18 to 26 cm. The coarse fur is dark brown to reddish brown or
blackish on the head and back and whitish or buff on the sides. The tail and feet are scantily
haired.
Found in habitats ranging from forest to scrubland, solenodons are terrestrial, although they
are able to climb. On the ground they travel in an irregular path with a waddling gait but can
run fast for short distances. Solenodons forage at night for invertebrates by probing leaf litter
and soil with their long snout and tearing apart rotten tree trunks with their powerful front
feet and long, sharp claws. Land crabs and snails, frogs, lizards, snakes, and bird eggs are
also eaten. Solenodons require much water.

Burrows are excavated in deep humus, but rock crevices, caves, and hollow tree trunks on the
ground are also used as shelters. The Cuban solenodon (S. cubanus) is social, with several
animals living together in the same burrow. They communicate with twitters, chirps, squeaks,
squeals, and clicks. Adult solenodons approach each other with open mouths, perhaps
emitting high-frequency clicks. Contact then often results in one animal’s closing its mouth
over the snout of the other. One or two young are born per litter. This species once occurred
throughout Cuba but now survives only in the southeastern portion of the island. The
Hispaniolan solenodon (S. paradoxus) lives in Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

Solenodons make up the family Solenodontidae (order Soricomorpha), which belongs to a larger
group of mammals referred to as insectivores. Although classified in the same order as shrews
(family Soricidae), solenodons are only distantly related to them and do not have any close living
relatives. Solenodons appear to be island remnants of an evolutionary diversification that included
shrewlike members of the extinct family Apternodontidae.