Minecraft Platypus mod is my new favourite egg-laying mammal

(Image credit: Mojang / Your_Jeans)

There's a cartoon called Phineas and Ferb that has an excellent song about a platypus called Perry. It says "he's a furry little flatfoot who'll never flinch from a fray" and "he's got more than just mad skill—he's got a beaver tail and bill." Perry the Platypus is the tribute these unique mammals deserve, and now our web-footed burping friend has been modded into Minecraft.

You can pick up the mod, which has the rather straightforward name of 'Platypuses in Minecraft!', over at Curseforge, and it does add platypuses. Yes they are amazing looking, and the mod was created by Your_Jeans and a friend.

When you add platypuses to your Minecraft world, they'll spawn in rivers and swamps, with the Perry the platypus variant being rarer. The mod has an admirable dedication to the makeup of our duck-billed friend, and so they have poisonous claws and adore crayfish. Thus crayfish can be used to tame them and get your own platypus pet.

But then the fun's only beginning: your tamed platypus will now help you fight other mobs, and you can also somehow extract poison from them with a glass bottle. Finally, the most important thing: You can breed tamed platypuses with a salmon!

The mod's been out for a while and this is not the first time platypuses have been put in Minecraft: there's a server called Minecraft Ultimate that's had them for a while, and ideas for a mob like this have been around for years. But this one has Perry the Platypus so that puts it over the line for me. Minecraft's newest official mob is this dancing, gift-giving spirit, and it's also had a bit of an amphibious moment with the addition of cutesy frogs. The internet petitions for some official platypus-surfing action start here.

TOPICS

Rich is a games journalist with 15 years' experience, beginning his career on Edge magazine before working for a wide range of outlets, including Ars Technica, Eurogamer, GamesRadar+, Gamespot, the Guardian, IGN, the New Statesman, Polygon, and Vice. He was the editor of Kotaku UK, the UK arm of Kotaku, for three years before joining PC Gamer. He is the author of a Brief History of Video Games, a full history of the medium, which the Midwest Book Review described as "[a] must-read for serious minded game historians and curious video game connoisseurs alike."