Platypus.  The name has to be among the strangest in the animal kingdom.  The animal itself, however, is even stranger than its name.

The platypus sports a bill like a duck, a tail like a beaver, and fur and feet like an otter.  The webbing on its feet is retractable for when it ambles around on land.  The males carry a venomous spur like a scorpion on their rear feet, and the females lay eggs like reptiles or birds.

When fully grown, a platypus is about 15 inches long, not including the 5-inch tail.  An adult weighs about 3 pounds.  They only populate parts of Australia.

Platypuses are graceful swimmers.  They paddle with their front webbed feet and steer with their hind feet and beaverlike tail.  The creatures have dense, dark-brown fur that helps them stay warm underwater.  Folds of skin cover their eyes and ears to prevent water from entering, and their nostrils close with a watertight seal.  They can remain submerged for several minutes.

The skin of their “duckbill” holds thousands of receptors that help the platypus navigate underwater and detect the electric fields generated by all living things.  They sweep along the bottom of rivers, streams, ponds and lakes using electrolocation to find hiding shellfish, insects, larvae or worms which they then carry to the surface to eat.  Electrolocation is a rare trait among animals in general, but especially so among mammals. 

The platypus has baffled scientists from the beginning.  When the first platypus specimen was sent back to England in 1799, zoologist George Shaw’s initial conclusion was that the animal was a hoax.  He actually attempted to pry the bill off the body in his search for the threads that held it in place. 

The platypus is such an aberration that it took taxonomists more than eighty years to classify it.  Though finally designated a mammal, its skeletal construction resembles a reptile, with pectoral girdles and splayed legs.  Laying eggs is certainly reptilian, and is certainly un-mammal-like.  Being an egg-layer lands platypuses in the extremely rare mammal class called monotremes, a characteristic they share only with spiny anteaters.  The additional matter of being venomous is yet another incredibly rare attribute for mammals.  (One can begin to see the challenges to classifying the platypus!)

In 2008, scientists were able to decipher the entire DNA of the duck-billed platypus and discovered that it shares genes with reptiles, birds, and mammals.  Not surprising based on its appearance and characteristics, but extremely upsetting to evolutionists.

Long before the troubling (to evolutionists) DNA information, biologists struggled with the complexities of the platypus.  In 1992, Australian biologist, Michael Archer wrote, “Indeed, evolutionary scientists are baffled about the ancestry of the platypus.”  A former Director of the National Human Genome Research Institute, (Francis S. Collins), admits: “At first glance, the platypus appears as if it was the result of an evolutionary accident.”

Studying the platypus, Australian zoologist Dr. Susan Lee eventually developed a different hypothesis.  She postulates that a tear in the space-time continuum allowed extraterrestrial life to enter Australia, introducing a deluge of freak animals into the “Land Down Under.”  (She’s serious!)  The platypus was the animal that moved her to settle on such an unusual conclusion.  She states that the platypus “makes no sense from a biological standpoint.  It looks like a beaver and a duck had [an offspring].  It’s far too [ugly] to be a product of evolution.”  And if it couldn’t have evolved, then how else could it come to be except by extreme circumstances?

Interestingly, according to what he wrote while visiting Australia, it seems that Charles Darwin actually began to consider his evolutionary hypothesis while examining the corpse of a platypus.  The animal, along with some of the other exotic creatures he encountered in that country, sparked doubt in his mind that one Creator made all of the animal kingdom with its multiple and strange variations.

Of course, most evolutionists discount God altogether.  Charles Darwin, still a Christian when he examined the confounding platypus, clearly underestimated the capacity of the Lord.  Which is truly sad.

Elihu in the book of Job says this:  “God does great things by his power.  Is there any teacher like him?  Who can tell him which way he should go?  Who can say to him, ‘You did wrong’?  Remember that you should praise his work”  (Job 36:22-24 – God’s Word).  That’s wise advice. 

So what does the muddled-up, complex, and unique … but fascinating, wonderful, and delightful platypus show us about the Lord?  First of all, that the Creator is indeed creative!  He has unlimited imagination.  Secondly, he isn’t bound by the preconceptions of humans; God makes his own rules.  Additionally, he is exceedingly wise, and every creature created by the Creator is “good”  (Genesis 1:25).  And finally, that God has a holy sense of humor. 

I doubt that the Lord laughs at the futile and foolish attempts of humans to sound wise; it’s too tragic.  But he could.  I suspect that he at least smiles as biologists try to make sense of the platypus.