SYDNEY -- Australia's platypus is an animal so strange it would not be out of place in a "Star Wars" cantina -- an egg-laying mammal with the bill of a duck, the tail of a beaver and a unique way of nurturing its young by excreting milk through its belly like sweat.
Australian scientists believe this primitive lactation method, where a newly hatched platypus must lick milk directly from its teat-less mother's belly, delivers a "miracle milk" with high levels of nutrition and immune protection.
