I know it is a question that has crossed everyone’s mind at least once. If I was stranded on a desert island with only a lady platypus, could I milk it? We already know that it doesn’t make sense to harvest the platypus for an immediate meal, when you could instead live harmoniously with it and eat it’s eggs*. Could the breakfast scramble come complete with a glass of platypus milk? Unfortunately, for those of you versed in soliciting cows for milk, or using any other traditional mammalian nipple-based milk dispensing systems, you may be caught off guard at first. You see, your clever new lady platypus friend secretes her milk through special pore filled patches on her underbelly and it trickles down through her fur. A bonus though, if you continue to drink the milk from the platypus fur and convince her that you are her child, she will reward you by increasing the nutrients in her milk. Alas, it might prove difficult to get into the glass. But I doubt you took one to the island anyway.
*Granted the eggs won’t be very fulfilling, due to their diminutive size. This is what you get for trying to eat mammal eggs. See Gregg Wilson’s report from Nature, 1907.
[...] want anyone to get started on that whole mammals don’t lay eggs bit, that has already been discussed. Apparently, eggs do not necessarily follow rules of proportion and don’t change as one [...]