What makes a mammal a mammal? In grade school, we were taught that all mammals have three distinguishing characteristics: fur, milk and live birth. But there is a problem: not all mammals have all three of these features. Monotremes (the group that includes the platypus and the spiny echidna) have fur and milk, but they do not give birth to live young. They lay eggs!
So, there seems to be a sort of gray area between mammals and non-mammals. Is there something wrong with our definition of mammals, or do we have a deeper problem? Perhaps there are other gray areas that we need to worry about. Continue reading
4D Biology 