Echidnas - Do you know what they are?

There was a question on a show recently that asked ‘Why do echidnas put their snouts in water and blow bubbles?’ and we both failed not only to guess the answer but to recall what an echidna was – maybe it was an insect? Or a bird?

Same family as platypus

I discovered that an echidna (pronounced uh-kid-nuh) was a toothless egg-laying mammal, sometimes known as a spiny anteater, and looks like a long-spined hedgehog or a porcupine. The four surviving species of echidnas and the platypus are the only living mammals that lay eggs and the only surviving members of the order Monotremata.

With a tiny face and small eyes, they don’t have great vision, but their long nose, or beaks, gives them an acute sense of smell. They are also powerful diggers, thanks to their short, strong limbs and long, rear-facing claws. Their spines are actually an enlarged, tough form of hair – keratin, the same as our fingernails and hair. While their appearance is similar to anteaters, porcupines and hedgehogs, they are not related. The echidna has the most in common with the duck-billed platypus.

The four species of echidna

There are four species of echidna: the short-beaked echidna, the Sir David's long-beaked echidna (Zaglossus attenboroughi - how cool is that to have a creature named after you!) the eastern long-beaked echidna (Zaglossus bartoni), and the western long-beaked echidna (Zaglossus bruijnii).

Found throughout Australia, Tasmania and New Guinea

Echidnas found in South Australia tend to be much darker in colour than their eastern states counterparts. For example, echidnas from south-east Queensland are a lot lighter and can almost look like they have ‘blonde highlights’ from the year-round sun. Pure white and even red echidnas have been spotted on Kangaroo Island.

They grow to around 35-52 cm in length, weighing up to 6 kg - not much bigger than a domestic cat - but covered in spines. Having no teeth, they eat ants, worms, termites, ants, and other insects by using their long, sticky tongues that help them to capture insects.

Appearances can be deceiving when it comes to the echidna. While they might look fearsome owing to their spiny exterior, these animals are actually quite shy and placid. Although they are both spiny, echidnas don't release their spines to defend themselves as do porcupines.

Puggles!

What a delightful name for their babies – puggles! A puggle will grow from a single egg laid in the mother’s pouch, which hatches in about 10 days. At birth, the baby is tiny and measures less than 1.27 centimetres long. The puggle leaves the pouch when it grows spines (wise move by momma to have it evacuated!) at about three months old, but they stay and suckle from the mother until they're weaned, at about six months of age. Very young echidnas are fair game to be eaten by dingoes, goannas and feral cats.

Adult echidnas are occasionally taken by dingoes and eagles, and foxes may be significant predators. In Tasmania the Tasmanian Devil will eat them, spines and all. Snakes may also invade the burrows of echidnas, feeding on young echidnas that have not yet developed spines.

All aboard the love train!

They are mostly solitary animals, but the rare times they are seen collectively is when they form ‘an echidna train’ in the breeding season of mid-May to September. They will actively seek a female, forming line of up to 10, with the smallest bringing up the rear, but they’ll ignore her if she’s not fat enough to breed successfully! This curious behaviour has been seen to take days, with regular clock offs of an evening for everyone to sleep, before resumption of the slow pursuit around 9 the next morning. This continues until the female is ready to mate.

Although long-beaked echidnas are experiencing drastic population declines and are at high risk of extinction, the short-beaked echidna is common and well-protected in Australia.

Marilyn writes regularly for The Portugal News, and has lived in the Algarve for some years. A dog-lover, she has lived in Ireland, UK, Bermuda and the Isle of Man. 

Marilyn Sheridan