Rare baby platypus footage + a closer look at monotremes

Have you ever seen a newly hatched baby platypus? The duck-billed, beaver-tailed, Australian mammal is a rare creature in the animal kingdom, and is very rarely seen as a pink and furless, jellybean-size baby in its mother’s burrow.

From Sir David Attenborough’s Rise of the Animals: The Dawn of Mammals, see a brand new baby platypus and a hatching baby echidna. Let’s also take a closer look at their order: Monotremes — mammals that lay eggs. Both the platypus and four species of echidnas, all from Australia and New Guinea, nurse their newly hatched young by lactating milk, the combination that makes them so unique.

There’s more Attenborough in the archives. Plus, see more of that echidna clip: This is how a baby echidna (a puggle) hatches from an egg.