![]() Habitat disruption from dams, irrigation projects and pollution may pose a threat for the future, but platypuses, classified as "Least Concern" in the 2007 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, still continue to thrive in these less than perfect environments with the present distribution little altered from pre-European times. Though less than in earlier years, accidental entanglement in fishing nets still results in some mortality. Improved fishing regulations since 1950 include a larger mesh size for fishing nets, with a particular focus on New South Wales where the impact from fishing gear has the most impact on platypus populations. Hunted for their fur until the early 20th century, platypuses have recovered well primarily due to government conservation programs in the states in which they occur. ![]() Electro-receptors in the elongated protuberance allow them to detect the electric fields of the bottom-dwelling invertebrates they eat, and unlike a duck's bill, a platypus' highly sensitive bill is not hard, but soft and moist. Platypuses' long, leathery bills are perhaps their most distinctive physical feature, and their most important tool for hunting. Adult males are about 2 feet long, including the six-inch tail, and females are smaller. Platypus adults have no functional teeth. Like reptiles, they have only one posterior orifice for both excretion and reproduction both the anal and urinogenital apertures open into a common chamber at the end of the gut called a cloaca. They do not have external ears like most exclusively land-dwelling mammals, they walk like reptiles, they have streamlined bodies like otters, broad tails like beavers, bills that are shaped like a duck's bill and duck-like webbed feet - and most unusually for a mammal they lay eggs covered in a shell that hatch outside the body. Duck-billed platypuses, with their combination of seemingly mismatched physical characteristics, are perfectly adapted to their semi-aquatic life in the freshwater habitats of eastern Australia, New Guinea and Tasmania.
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