Answer: Belly Buttons

Platypuses are mammals. Humans are mammals. Despite what a strange creature the platypus is, both we and the platypus are mammals and we share quite a few things thanks to distant common mammalian forefathers.

One thing we don’t share with the platypus, however, is the presence of a belly button. Unlike humans (and thousands of other placenta-fed mammals), the platypus is one of only two mammal types in the world that lays eggs. As such platypuses, along with echidnas (another peculiar Australian-based mammal), have no belly buttons as they were never linked via umbilical cord to their mothers.

Now that we’ve highlighted what we have but the platypus does not, let’s leave this little bit of trivia by highlighting all the really neat things the platypus has but we do not. The platypus is such a curious creature that when it was first discovered, it was widely considered by European scientists (who had not seen a live specimen in the wild) to be a hoax. You can hardly blame them when you consider the fact that scientists returning from Australia claimed they had found a warm-blooded mammal with a duck bill, webbed feet, beaver tail, ankle spurs (only the males’ ankle spurs are venomous), that laid eggs instead of giving birth, and was nearly ten degrees cooler than other warm blooded mammals.