Paragraph on “Which Mammal has a poison spur?” complete paragraph for Class 9, Class 10, Class 11 and Class 12

Which Mammal has a poison spur?

The male duck – billed platypus, that lives in Australia, has!  It has five very strong  each of its four feet, but the back feet have an extra claw, which  can discharge poison. It is used when fighting.

In fact the feet of these dark brown, oval shaped furry mammals  are very interesting altogether. They are webbed, for the purposes of swimming, and the web on the forefeet stretches out over the tip of its nails. As this would be very awkward when  walking, it is conveniently and neatly folded back over its paws, when out of the water.

The favourite haunts of the platypus are where streams open out into wide, still pools. To a special breeding burrow. This burrow, which is a long tunnel made in a bank, is often as long as 15 m (50 ft). at the end of the tunnel the female lays her two eggs on a nest of leaves.

At birth the young are ill- formed, blind and quite helpless. They remain blind for nearly three months and are suckled by the mother until they are five months old.

As you probably know, the young most mammals are born  alive, as distinct from birds and reptiles that lay eggs. But the platypus is one of the exceptions as she both  lays eggs and then suckles her young in the way mammals usually do. This animal which is the most primitive of all mammals with its does not have teats. Instead she secrets, or oozes, milk through a number of small pores in her skin. This collects into a cup – like hollo9w near her abdomen and it is from here that the young lick the milk, instead of sucking from a teat in the normal way.