Everything about Monotreme totally explained
Monotremes (from the Greek
monos 'single' +
trema 'hole', referring to the
cloaca) are
mammals that lay eggs (
Prototheria) instead of giving birth to live young like
marsupials (
Metatheria) and
placental mammals (
Eutheria).
They are conventionally treated as comprising a single order
Monotremata, though a recent classification proposes to divide them into the orders
Platypoda (the
Platypus along with its fossil relatives) and
Tachyglossa (the
echidnas). The entire grouping is also traditionally placed into a subclass Prototheria, which was extended to include several fossil orders but these are no longer seen as constituting a natural group allied to monotreme ancestry. A controversial hypothesis now relates the monotremes to a different assemblage of fossil mammals in a
clade termed
Australosphenida.
Monotremes are among the small number of mammalian species known to be capable of
electroreception.
General characteristics
Like other mammals, monotremes are
warm-blooded with a high metabolic rate (though not as high as other mammals, see below); have
hair on their bodies; produce
milk, through mammary glands, to feed their young; have a single bone in their lower jaw; and have three
middle ear bones.
Monotremes were very poorly understood for many years, and to this day some of the
19th century myths that grew up around them endure. It is still sometimes thought, for example, that the monotremes are "inferior" or quasi-reptilian, and that they're a distant ancestor of the "superior" placental mammals. It now seems plain that modern monotremes are the survivors of an early branching of the mammal tree; a later branching is thought to have led to the
marsupial and
placental groups.
Similarly, it's still sometimes said that monotremes have less developed
internal temperature control mechanisms than other mammals, but more recent research shows that monotremes maintain a constant body temperature in a wide variety of circumstances without difficulty (for example, the Platypus while living in an icy mountain stream). Early researchers were misled by two factors: monotremes maintain a lower average temperature than most mammals (around 32°C [90°F], compared to about 35°C [95°F] for marsupials, and 38°C [100°F] for most placentals); secondly, the
Short-beaked Echidna (which is much easier to study than the reclusive Platypus) only maintains normal temperature when it's active: during cold weather, it conserves energy by "switching off" its temperature regulation. Finally, poor thermal regulation has also been observed in the
hyraxes, which are placental mammals.
Physiology
The key physiological difference between monotremes and other mammals is the one that gave them their name;
Monotreme means 'single opening' in Greek, and comes from the fact that their urinary, defecatory, and reproductive systems all open into a single duct, the
cloaca. This structure is very similar to the one found in reptiles. Monotremes and marsupials have a single cloaca (though marsupials also have a separate genital track) while placental mammal females have separate openings for reproduction, urination and defecation: the
vagina, the
urethra, and the
anus.
Monotremes lay
eggs. However, the egg is retained for some time within the mother, who actively provides the egg with nutrients. Monotremes also lactate, but have no defined
nipples, excreting the milk from their
mammary glands via openings in their skin. All species are long-lived, with low rates of reproduction and relatively prolonged parental care of infants. Infant echidnas are commonly known as
puggles; the same term, though not generally accepted, is popularly applied to young platypus as well.
Living monotremes lack teeth as adults. Fossil forms and modern platypus young have the "tribosphenic"
molars (with the
occlusal surface formed by three
cusps arranged in a triangle), which are one of the hallmarks of extant mammals. However, recent work suggests that monotremes acquired this form of molar
independently of placental mammals and marsupials, although this isn't well established. The jaw of monotremes is constructed somewhat differently from those of other mammals, and the jaw opening muscle is different. As in all true mammals, the tiny bones that conduct sound to the inner ear are fully incorporated into the skull, rather than lying in the jaw as in
cynodonts and other pre-mammalian
synapsids; however, this feature, too, is now claimed to have evolved independently in monotremes and
therians, although, like the analogous evolution of the tribosphenic molar, this is disputed. The imminent sequencing of the platypus genome should shed light on this and many other questions regarding the evolutionary history of the monotremes.
However, the external opening of the ear still lies at the base of the jaw. The monotremes also have extra bones in the shoulder girdle, including an interclavicle, which are not found in other mammals. Monotremes retain a reptile-like gait, with legs that are on the sides of rather than underneath the body. The monotreme leg bears a spur in the ankle region; the spur is non-functional in echidnas, but contains a powerful
venom in the male platypus.
Their metabolic rate is remarkably low by mammalian standards, although the extent to which this is a characteristic of monotremes, as opposed to an adaptation on the part of the small number of surviving species to harsh environmental conditions, is uncertain.
Taxonomy
The only surviving examples of monotremes are all indigenous to
Australia and
New Guinea, although there's evidence that they were once more widespread. Fossil and genetic evidence shows that the monotreme line diverged from other mammalian lines about 150 million years ago and that both the short-beaked and long-beaked echidna species are derived from a
platypus-like ancestor. Fossils of a jaw fragment 110 million years old were found at
Lightning Ridge,
New South Wales. These fragments, from species
Steropodon galmani, are the oldest known fossils of monotremes. Fossils from the genera
Kollikodon,
Teinolophos, and
Obdurodon have also been discovered. In
1991, a fossil tooth of a 61-million-year-old platypus was found in southern
Argentina (since named
Monotrematum, though it's now considered to be an
Obdurodon species). (See fossil monotremes below.)
- ORDER MONOTREMATA
Fossil monotremes
Excepting Ornithorhynchus anatinus, all the animals listed in this section are only known from fossils.
Family Kollikodontidae
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