This sort of creature could only have come into existence by accident. With the bill and webbed feet of a duck, eyes of a mole, the tail of a beaver, mammalian fur and milk, and reptilian eggs, the duckbill platypus is the closest thing to a chimera that we can get, a veritable patchwork quilt of animal parts. What an odd, odd-looking creature! No wonder researchers chose it for their next genome sequencing project. The sequencing revealed that its genome reflects the patchwork quality of its physical appearance, containing avian, reptilian, and mammalian genomic features.
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