Nature & Environment
Studying mammals: A winning design
...care in the monotremes are distinctly mammalian. Neither monotreme species is genuinely primitive or unsuccessful. They are specialist feeders; the platypus feeding on invertebrates (e.g. 'freshwater shrimp, an insect larva or a small mollusc' [p. 18]) living in the bottom of streams, while echidnas are terrestrial carnivores. The word 'primitive' implies a similarity...