[Moderator's note: edited the cuss word.]

Yes, platypus is a pseudo-Latin bastardization of the Greek words platys and pous. However, we do not use the word platyspous, we decided to force it to conform to Latin standards and get rid of the extra ‘s’ and ‘o’ to make it easier to use. As a ‘Latin’ word, it is logical to follow Latin conjugation.

Obviously using standard English to pluralize has its benefits (particularly ease).

Trying to return it to Greek before fusing them again would not result in platypodes anyway… (there is an fault in the process of only pluralizing one word and dropping less letters)

As for anyone trying to argue the chronological superiority of the Greek language coming first, I am sure that the hypothetical Proto-Indo-European language has claim there, so perhaps we should persue ancient possibilities for our endings?

Where does Neatorama come up with the ‘real Greek plural’?

In a word, no. These venom proteins (peptides) are thought to have mostly evolved from genes of the host animal that have duplicated, become expressed only in the venomous glands, then diverged to become more toxic. I mention this in my article (Jen linked it above, or click on my name above this comment).

We’ve always known about other, simpler organisms that can pass/acquire genetic material from other organisms (virii and bacteria, for example)…. and the recent discoveries about how children acquire genetic material via cells passed through the mother in utero would seem to indicate that’s it highly possible for complex organisms as well.

I’m sure there are more surprises within this animal, seeing so many on its surface.

Thanks for reading and commenting.

@RobertE: I tried really hard to find a good place to link to this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mj6TXGIT0A#t=0m31s but couldn’t

@Grant I love your nitpicking, thanks! For more detail on the approach used to identify these genes, visit Grant’s site: http://sciblogs.co.nz/code-for-life/2010/10/07/finding-platypus-venom/

Thanks all!

Jen

Whenever I see a story about a platypus, I think of Phineas and Ferb.

80 different toxins in their venom? Curse you, Perry the Platypus!!!

I wouldn’t say that they have found 80 venoms — yet. The thing about their work is that rather than obtain supplies of the venom and try figure out the poisons in it, they built on the newly sequenced platypus genome sequence by screened for genes expressed in the venomous gland and compared them with known venom proteins (or peptides) from other species. These candidate venoms still need to be tested. What they have so far are ~80 genes coding for things (closely) resembling venoms in other species. Nit-pickery

It’s interesting that this venom has so many toxins, and I wonder if the platypus is immune to many of them. This might be the result of an evolutionary arms-race among male platypi to have more lethal venom, and be less susceptible to the venom of competing males.