Goodness but those babies can eat! All they do is drink my milk and grow bigger and bigger. Platypus milk is very solid and full of iron - that must be why they grow so fast. My milk glands began to get bigger way back in the winter until they were shaped like fans and stretched to cover my whole stomach. Milk seeped through my fur as soon as the babies came out of the eggs and started sucking.
The babies look like real little platypuses now. Their eyes opened when they were four weeks old and they each have fur and a proper bill now. They both have spurs but I know the spurs
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on the girl will just disappear before she is a year old.
It's a full time job being a platypus mother. When I'm not in the burrow feeding the little ones, I'm out in the creek trying to find enough food to keep me alive. I have to look after the family and look after myself too.
I spend every spare moment searching for food now. I close my eyes and ears, dive, spend a minute or two under the water, then I swim back to the surface to chew and swallow my food and then dive down again. My front and back feet are webbed to help me swim around. Because I always swim with my eyes and ears shut, I have no problems searching for food at night or in cloudy water. |
