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Call it platipus or duckbill - the fact is that it is really popular

I am a sincere estimator of the duckbill (or platipus), maybe because I in Australia have had the opportunity to see it from the alive, but also because it seems to have been creation from God or from the Nature for put our apparatus categorial in question. The duckbill has a beak of duck, the webbed legs and it does the eggs, but it is not a bird, withered lives departs under water of the day but is not an amphibian, it covered of hair, it has the tail from beaver, it nurse the small, but it doesn't have the nipples, and one work to understand from where the small platypuses suck the milk.
When, at the end of the 700, an exemplary has been brought in England, the naturalists have judged the joke of a taxidermist. Finally (but the debate has lasted decades) I have been decided to arrange it among the mammals, order of the [monotremi], but if goings to see a tassonomic tree you find him just of side, like out of tree, for don't leave it go to turn like a stateless.
It is an animal apparently no-Kantian, to such sign that (just for assay the Kant theory of the acquaintance) I have intended of write a wise man on Kant and the duckbill. Because the encyclopedias that I had me at home didn't give historic news, the idea has come me of look for on the Internet. Like I have then driven, I would have found anything also if I have looked for it with his scientific name (ornithorhynchus anatinus), with that Italian, French, German, etcetera. But most of the Internet speaks english and I have started with "platypus".
Surprise. I according to the motors of search find from two to three thousands of occorrences. We cashier those that they concern bookstores, organizations for the lease of computer, clubs also entitled to this animal, a "Ornitorrinco in Eden" (with two r, because it use the Portuguese term, who knows because, the site is in California) that it concern the creation of an opera of telerobotic art; and the Home Page of a girl that becomes call Platypus and that show us the series of his photos, a for each year of college. But also these are always interesting symptoms, because it is evident that the Internet seems gone through from a Platipus Mania (name of a site, while an other is called Platipus Loved in USA).
There are faculty of natural sciences and centers of search (many Australian obviously) that of the duckbill there buggers the description, the photo, the geographical distribution, the history, and in the case of the Genetic Catalog of the University Illinois you could find all you need for an examination from thirty and praise. There are persons that devote themselves to the cult of the duckbill, and one of these is an Italian, Pastrano, that wonders might like one remain indifferent to so much beauty, advancing the suspect that the duckbill can be the goal of the creation. There is an other fan, Gary S. Rosin, whose site The amorous platypus has been visited from 1693 persons in these last six months, and devotes a link to the problem of the plural of "platypus" (platypuses? platypi? platypus?). Rosin adapts the platypus a celebrated tale, of a guy that wants to order five of these animals but that doesn't know like they do to the plural, and he then writes: "Send me a platypus. Even, five." There are poetries, books to color for the children, a "Gelatinous Platypus Page", that dedication to the animal, to jab, curious notices.
There is a complete bibliography, a film on the nursing (55 dollars, 25 minutes) a study of the australian coins with the image of the platypus comes brought again for complete an article appeared on the "Creation magazine" of the June 1986, of fundamentalist tendence, where he assert that, since the platypus, old of 110 millions of years, has been ever evolved, it means that is like God has remained it among the fifth and the sixth day (among the aquatic animals and earthlings). This site explains about it gotten on the Ark (not being a fish it can't resist under water) and it is discussed how platypus went from the Ararat Mount to Australia. Because I suspect, and I know that Internet locates situated to don't also finish on the cat, I have gone to look for other exotic animals, and I must say that also these is much represented, more of the duckbill: I have found situated 7000 sites for the koala and the armadillo, 10000 for the panda.
But they are more known animals, that from time have given names to commodities, like the Fiat Panda. I remain convicted that the craze of the duckbill is an unusual phenomenon. Maybe because the platypus is an animal much post modern, a collage, a citadel of other animals; maybe because it seem a commodity of the weak thought. Maybe because it is an environmental symbol, covert in the his reduced oceanic, protected and beloved. I don't know it. (Software originated translation)

Umberto Eco, on Espresso, 1996...