When Western colonists in Australia reported their first sighting of a platypus back to Europe in 1797, zoologists in England wouldn't believe the reports. A mammal that had a duck bill and laid eggs? Please. When the first platypus skin was sent to England, the zoologists thought that parts of different animals had been sewn together to make it, as a hoax. An animal like that wasn't possible in the animal kingdom as they understood it to be. It had to be something that they recognized or they couldn't accept it. It wasn't until some decades later, in 1884, that Western scientists got close enough to study the platypus, probed it (through what means I don't even want to think about) and realized that the platypus really existed.

The whole hub-bub about the platypus was that it defied preexisting categories. Humans, unfortunately, have a tendency to get their panties in an uproar over "categorical paradoxes" such as this. What exactly was the platypus and how were they going to categorize it? Rather than adjusting the animal classification system the scientists had built up to accommodate this newfound creature, they relegated the platypus to a back alley and pounced him an oddity.

This is a typical human response to things they don't understand.

Most scientists and zoologists, having come out of the Victorian ages, realize now that the boundaries we erect to try to understand the world around us aren't so concrete, that they're quite fuzzy . We've realized that the world is mutable, that we become what we touch in a way, pondered the paradox of Schroedinger's damned cat, realized that amazing things happen at the macrocosmic and microcosmic levels.

But the quandaries that the general public find themselves in when faced with creatures such as the platypus still confounds me. Popular references are filled with statements about the "duck-billed platypus" who "looks like a beaver" and "lays eggs like a bird". Statements like that remind me of certain whacked-out statements I've heard, like
"Mexicans look like coyotes, so they must be dishonest" (thanks to a racist relative for that one)
"Lesbians look like men" (who's to say it's not the men who look like the lesbians?) and
"the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence dress up like nuns, so they must be making fun of nuns" (and, logic naturally follows, every time enamored kids dress up as vampires for Halloween, that must mean they're making fun of vampires).
Humans have this tendency to make immediate cause-and-effect judgments about what they encounter, instead of actually thinking.

I've seen a myriad number of platypus sites that refer to the creature as an anomaly, weird-looking. Who is to say what's weird-looking and what's not? There are fashion police in nature now? It seems that something intrinsically unique and which doesn't fit into a pre-made category is a freak, and that something is only ok and acceptable if it fits into a broad generality. I.e., I'm okay if I fit into the mainstream, but if I've got my own agenda, then that's when the problems start.

What exactly is this kind of mentality advocating?

It is important to have definitions and categories. Human progress and education is dependent on man's ability to define and label things. It's how the human mind works. But unfortunately humans also have a tendency to get so wrapped up in the words and labels they use that they forget what that label was initially meant to represent.

Case in point: think of the world 'child'. What do you think of? Someone young? Is that it? "Someone who is young, under 10 years of age"? But what if you get into an altercation with a friend and out of frustration you call her a child? What did that word 'child' mean then? It implies immaturity, negative connotations. Imagine a 9 year old defending himself against his parent, trying to explain what he's thinking, but the parent waves his hand at his kid and says, "you're just a child, wait until you grow up". Do you see the inherent stereotypes and assumptions you find in such a simple word? The word comes to mean something else entirely, and carries with it all the assumptions and stereotypes. The child comes to resent the word and waits for the day when he becomes old enough to become some bigger, better word.

Consider Moxie, a guy I know who doesn't have too much self-esteem. He's actually pretty darned intelligent, but he was told often growing up, "you're stupid, you're stupid." Moxie grew up repeating to himself, "I'm stupid, I'm just stupid", and despite the reality, that he's actually very smart, he has accepted the finality of the word 'stupid' and believes that all the negative connotations of the word 'stupid' apply to him. He accepts the negative connotations of the word as truth, despite the fact that the reality of his intelligence is markedly different and much more positive.

Words can be dangerous. Words can be misleading. Words are so powerful that there is a debate in the linguistics community on whether the language we use shapes our perception of reality or whether it's the other way around. I.e., do the words we use shape how we see things? Human language and the ability to communicate through signs and symbols is a remarkable accomplishment, from which art, music, literature, philosophy, semiotics, engineering, quantum physics, the future, is born. But as anyone who's studied philosophy knows, philosophers and abstract thinkers and such have a problem with something called recursion. Meaning, the arguments they use are self-referential, defined by their own prejudices and assumptions. How can we know that what we're thinking isn't influenced by our prejudices? Is it possible to be truly objective, omnipotent?

Oftentimes, philosophers and people who deal with semantics and categories and such get so wrapped up in their words that they lose sight of what's in front of them. They'll look at a forest of trees, strong trunks growing out of the ground, but for them the forest is a concept, and they can devise a theorem that will disprove the existence of those trees, even while standing in their shadows. I remember one time when I was in high school and, out of boredom one day, I proved that I didn't exist. In 5 pages, using tried and true logical deduction. The assumption I came up with was that no one could prove to me that I WASN'T some disembodied head floating in a jar in some weird dimension, and so therefore it was possible that I was. I scared the hell out of myself.

Ever hear of Xeno's paradox? Xeno was a philosopher back in ancient Greece who came up with something called, oddly enough, Xeno's paradox. It goes like this: you're trying to go from point a to point b. You cross half the distance between a and b. But you still have half the distance remaining. So you cross half that distance. But half the distance still remains. And so on. If half the distance is always remaining, how do you ever actually get to point b? According to Xeno's paradox, it's impossible. (While you stand there dumbfounded, trying to figure this one out, Xeno will walk across the room and hand you his business card.) Moral of the story? Always check your premises.

Is the platypus a freak? I don't know, he seems perfectly suited for his life, for all his "mixed-up", "anomalous" parts. He lives and breathes and swims and eats and procreates just fine. I don't think it occurs to him to think about whether he fits into some man-made category. He is who he is, and would continue to be the same even if humans weren't there to get confused over him and tell him he's a "freak" and is "funny looking".

Is the platypus funny looking? Let me ask you this: have you ever really looked at someone who's naked? Everything seems strange if you look at it long enough.

If I had to choose between a platypus with a shiny pelt, who swims along happily and growls at me like a puppy if I get too close, and an angst-ridden philosopher who sits in a study disproving his own existence, I'd definitely go swimming with the platypus. And if I make sure not to call her names and try to apply my labels to her, I'm sure she'd let me. Labels probably don't stick to platypus fur anyway.