Echidna Facts Spiny Anteater

The echidna, also known as a spiny anteater, is a small dome-shaped egg-laying animal covered with sharp beige and black spines. It is a monotreme, which means it has both mammalian and reptilian characteristics. Like a bird or reptile, it lays eggs, but it feeds its baby milk like a mammal. The echidna is typically 30-45 cm long and weighs 2-7 kilos. It has coarse, reddish to dark brown fur and pointed, hollow keratin spines formed from modified hairs covering its entire body except for its face, legs, and underside. When threatened, the echidna rolls up into a ball with its spines facing outwards, providing a formidable and prickly defense against predators.

The echidna has a tiny face with small eyes and poor eyesight. However, it compensates for this inadequacy with an excellent sense of hearing and smell. It has no external ears, but instead, it has funnel-like slits on either side of its head, hidden beneath its fur, that serve the same function. The echidna has a slender, elongated, rubbery snout called a beak, which functions as a mouth and a nose. This snout contains hundreds to thousands of highly sensitive electro-receptors that act like radar, enabling it to locate prey by detecting the electrical signals they emit. On the bottom of its beak is a tiny mouth with toothless jaws, which can only open about 5 mm (0.2 in). From this small mouth, the echidna sticks out a long, sticky tongue with which it catches its prey.

The echidna has short, stumpy legs with its front feet pointing forward and back feet pointing backward. This unusual arrangement of the echidna’s feet is ideal for rapid digging but not suitable for running or walking. In fact, the echidna has a maximum speed of 2.3kph and a leisurely walk of just 1kph. The echidna’s front feet have five flat claws forming an effective spade for digging, burrowing, and tearing open termite mounds and rotting logs. On the other hand, its backward-pointing hind feet help it shovel away soil while burrowing. With this unique arrangement of its feet, the echidna can quickly dig itself into the ground. In addition, the echidna can rotate its rear legs 180 degrees and use the extra long claw on its second toe to comb and scratch debris from its fur and spines.

The echidna has only one opening at the end of its body called a cloaca, into which its digestive, reproductive, and urinary tracts release connect. This is a common characteristic among birds and reptiles but rarely occurs in mammals. The male and female echidna look the same externally. You can only tell an echidna’s gender by examining it internally or observing them during copulation. An echidna’s colouring depends on where it lives, being light brown in hotter climates and getting progressively darker, with thicker fur in colder climates.

The echidna's scientific name is Tachyglossus aculeatus, meaning "quick tongue and equipped with spines". It is also called a Spiny Anteater. Despite its slight resemblance to a hedgehog, the echidna is not a hedgehog. They are genetically and geographically worlds apart. The average lifespan of an echidna is around 16 years. The name Echidna is pronounced ih-KID-na.

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Echidna Habitat

Echidnas live in many habitats, from snow-covered mountains to deserts and even urban areas. They rest and sleep among rocks, hollow logs, holes among tree roots, hiding in leaf litter or sometimes occupying wombat or rabbit burrows. Although people rarely see echidnas, they are widespread and relatively common. Echidnas tend to avoid temperature extremes. In temperate climates, echidnas are usually active in the early morning and late afternoon. In hot arid environments, echidnas forage at night and shelter during the hotter parts of the day.

The short-beaked echidna lives in Australia and New Guinea, and the long-beaked echidna is only found in the highlands of New Guinea.

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Echidna Diet

The echidna eats termites, ants, earthworms, beetles, and larvae hidden in termite mounds, anthills, rotting logs, or under leaf litter. It uses its nostrils and electro-receptors on the tip of its beak to locate its prey. Once it has detected its prey, the echidna uses its powerful claws to tear open the mound and nests. It then flicks its 18cm long sticky tongue in and out up to 100 times a minute to lap up its prey. (Hence the echidna's scientific name of Tachyglossus, meaning `fast tongue)'. The echidna has no teeth. So, it uses hard keratin pads at the base of its tongue to push food up against the roof of its mouth and grinds its meal into a paste before swallowing. The echidna's gullet connects directly to its intestine. There's no sac in the middle with gastric glands that secrete powerful acids and digestive enzymes. The echidna gets most of the water it requires from its diet. However, this is sometimes supplemented by drinking water or licking morning dew from plants and grasses.

The climate governs the echidna's feeding habits. In very hot weather, the echidna is nocturnal, only feeding at night. In cooler weather, it is diurnal, foraging in the morning and evening.

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Echidna Reproduction, Eggs, Puggle

Yes the echidna lays eggs inside a shallow pouch but feeds its baby milk!

Being solitary animals, echidnas only socialise during the mating season from June to September. At this time, up to 11 male echidnas form a line, sometimes referred to as a “love train”, and follow a female. Usually, the successful suitor is the male who stuck closest to her the longest. Echidnas copulate (mate) by lying on their sides with their spineless undersides facing each other. Then, the male extends his large four-pronged penis and inserts it into the female’s cloaca for impregnation.

Approximately 16 days after fertilisation, the female echidna lays one leathery egg, roughly the size of a small grape (13–16 mm), into her pouch and incubates the egg for 7-10 days. When it is ready to hatch, the baby echidna, known as a puggle, uses its eye-tooth to tear through its leathery shell. It exists into the pouch and uses its tiny forelimbs to hold onto the fur in its mother’s pouch. The mother echidna does not have nipples or teats like other mammals. Instead, it oozes milk through its skin which the puggle licks up rapidly.

A puggle stays in its mother’s pouch for about three months. Once the puggle’s spines develop, its mother encourages it to spend more and more outside the pouch. Finally, when the puggle is about 200 days old, the mother will dig out its nursery burrow opening and abandon the young puggle to fend for itself.

• Detailed Explaination of Echidna Reproduction

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Echidna Swimming

Echidnas are good swimmers. They are known to visit their favourite watering-holes for an occasional dip. Unlike most land animals, the echidna swims with its head underwater, only lifting its beak above the waterline when it needs to take a breath. Like most quadrupeds (four-legged animals), the echidna uses a dog-paddling swimming stroke.

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Echidna's Defences

The echidna's speckled brown body is its first defence against predators. It will stay motionless for long periods and try to blend into its environment. If it is confronted while on a hard surface, which it cannot dig into, the echidna may try to waddle away at full speed. Unfortunately, it is not a very fast runner.

Its next strategy is the curl up into a spiky ball, protecting its underbelly and head and exposing only its dangerous spines to its assailant. Very few predators would attempt to attack the echidna in this pose.

The echidna's favourite defensive tactic is to use its powerful claws to dig itself into the ground until it is completely covered by soil or firmly embedded into the soil, making it difficult for any predator to dislodge it. It may also try to wedge itself under a rock or log while exposing its spiky spines, making it nearly impossible for an assailant to pull it out.

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Echidna Predators & Threats

The only native predator of adult echidnas is the Tasmanian Devil. However, baby echidnas sometimes fall victim to goannas — native monitor lizards who tear open their nursery burrow and capture spineless little puggles. Snakes, too, venture into nursery burrows and attack the young puggles. In addition, introduced animals such as dingoes, foxes, feral cats and dogs, are known to attack echidnas. Fortunately, the echidna's spiky defences offer it good protection, and these attacks are rarely successful.

Aborigines have been hunting echidnas since they arrived in Australia about 50,000 years ago. They have, however, had little impact on the overall survival of the echidna population. Since the arrival of European settlers in 1778, humans have significantly impacted the echidna population due to land clearing and forest felling. The echidnas, however, are adaptable animals and don't seem to have been seriously affected by these activities either.

Australian bushfires are the most significant single threat to an echidna. The echidna is too slow to run away. So instead of fleeing, it stays put and adapts a rather bizarre survival tactic.

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How Echidnas Survive Bushfires

Australian bushfires are terrifying events. Raging fires with flames as high as a four-story building race through tinder-dry vegetation, incinerating almost everything in their path and leaving a charred, desolate landscape behind.

Many people have noticed that after a bushfire, the only animals that seem unaffected by the catastrophe are echidnas. They have been seen frequently roaming about the burnt-out landscape seemingly untouched. So how do they do it? What survival tricks do they use?

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Echidna Conservation Status

The echidna is quite common and not considered threatened. It is protected by Australian law.

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How Did the Echidna Get its Name?

The name Echidna is derived from the Greek name Ekhidna. Because the echidna appeared to be half reptile and half mammal, in 1802 the British anatomist Everard Home named this unusual animal after the Greek goddess Ekhidna (meaning "she viper") who was half-snake and half-woman.

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Echidna and the Mutiny on the Bounty

The first European to describe the echidna was none other than William Bligh, the captain of the sailing ship the HMS Bounty of Mutiny on the Bounty fame. The Bounty was on its way to Tahiti in 1792 when it stopped at Adventure Bay in Tasmania. There Bligh reported that the animal had a bill like a duck and a thick brown coat of hair with quills. A member of the crew shot an echidna and later roasted it, reporting that it had a "delicious flavour".

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