The shape of the Echidna
makes the usual mammal mating position impossible. The female
lays down a scent trail and each male that finds it follows the
female.
There can be as many as ten males following the female. When she is
finally ready to mate, she digs the front part of her body into the
ground. All the males try
to dig under her. If there is
more than one
male this results in a doe nut shaped hole.
The males try to push each
other out of the hole, pushing nose to nose.
When only one is left, he
will have dug slightly under the female and he turns on his side
and
puts his cloaca into contact with the female's cloaca. The male can
then extend his four headed penis and complete the mating. The mating
is not completely face to face, but is more like this position
than the
usual mammal mating position.
If only one male
is present, the hole for mating will be a straight trench.
The
female lays her egg about 22 weeks after mating. It is not known
definitely how the female gets the egg into its pouch, but it seems
most likely that the female bends enough to lay directly into its
pouch. The pouch of the Echidna is just an arrangement of skin
folds.
The male has a "Pouch" as well, and it is difficult to
determine the
sex of an Echidna.
A baby Echidna is called a "Puggle".
The
Puggle may only weigh about 3 grams (a tenth of an ounce) straight
after hatching but can increase to 180 grams (6 ounces) after 60
days.
Bringing Up the Puggle
The
baby Echidna lives in its mother's pouch for
about seven weeks, feeding
on the milk from the two milk patches in the pouch and growing very
fast. When the Puggle's
spines start to harden the mother Echidna
transfers the Puggle to a nursery burrow.
She returns every five to ten
days to feed her Puggle.
After about five months the mother stops going
back and the young Echidna is by itself. The Echidna is unusual among
the mammals in not appearing to instruct its young.
Food
The
Echidna's main food is termites. This insect is very common and
widespread in Australia.
Echidnas will also eat ants and other
invertebrates including worms and grubs.
Predators
There were not many native predators
of the echidna. Wedge-tailed
Eagles will sometimes eat an Echidna, and Goannas can eat the Puggles
while they are in the nursery burrow.However there are several introduced
predators of the Echidna.
The first one was the Dingo.
This was a domestic Dog brought in by the
aboriginal people of Australia many thousand years ago and went
wild.
More recently there have been other Dogs, but worse than these are
the Cats and Foxes. Some of
these introduced predators have learned
techniques for dealing with this prickly animal.
Echidnas
are very fast diggers and on soft ground will escape their
predators by
digging. On hard ground
the Echidna will roll up into a ball, wait and
hope the predator will go away.
The spines of the Echidna are not as
fearsome as those of the porcupine, but still quite sharp. Humans
should not handle an Echidna without suitable protection or
knowledge.
Puncture wounds from the spines can get infected. Also, Echidnas should
not be relocated without good reason.
The animal could be a female that
is feeding a Puggle in a nursery burrow.
Moving the adult to another
area could result in the death by slow starvation of the baby.
As well as this,
the mother may try to get back to its baby and be killed on the road.
Habitat
Echidnas
live in a very wide variety of places such as the dry interior of
Australia, the tropical rain
forests and even the cities. The basic
requirement of Echidnas is termites.
Fire
In Australia
there are sometimes devastating bush fires that kill thousands of
animals. The Echidna cannot run fast. When there is a
fire they usually
only succeed in getting about a metre (3 feet), but they do this in
the
right direction. They dig
straight down and usually survive even a very
bad fire.
Brain
The Echidna's brain's prefrontal
lobe is larger in relation to
the animal's size than any other animal, including human beings.
Body Temperature
Like
all mammals, Echidnas maintain a body temperature. The normal
body temperature of the Echidna is 33̊ (91̊ F); this is lower than
that of
any other mammal. The Echidna also allows its body temperature to
vary
more. An Echidna can still be active with a body
temperature of 28̊ C
(82̊ F).
Hibernation
The Echidna can hibernate. It
will allow its body temperature to fall to 4̊ C (39̊F). The Echidna's
breathing rate drops to about one breath every three minutes.
Dreaming
Dreams occur in Rapid
Eye Movement Sleep (REM
sleep).It
used to be believed that the Echidna was the only mammal that does not
dream, but further study has found that the Echidna does dream, but
only at some temperatures.
Types
of Echidna.
There are two species of Echidna: the Short Beaked Echidna, Tachyglossus aculeatus which
lives in Australia including Tasmania, and in the New Guinea lowlands,
and the Long Beaked Echidna, Zaglossus bruijnithat lives
in the New Guinea highlands.
There
are five sub species of Short Beaked Echidna including the Tasmanian
sub species which is bigger than the mainland ones and has fur
longer
than its spines.
Sources
Robert, our SeaLink
driver on a tour of Kangaroo
Island,
told us some interesting
facts about Echidnas. Echidna
Love Trains - June - Scribbly Gum - ABC Science
Online was very useful in writing this article, as was the "DPIW
- Short-beaked Echidna" article on the Tasmanian Department
of Primary Industries and Water website.
For some of my articles, I have done
accompanying "Slide shows". I
will not do one for Echidnas
because the set of pictures: photos is so
good that to put my own online would be an impertenance.
Steve Challis
Invitation
to Link:
If any page of
this website is relevant to your site, please feel free to link to our
site.
There are four species of Echidna: the Short Beaked Echidna, Tachyglossus aculeatus which
lives in Australia including Tasmania, and in the New Guinea lowlands,
and three species of Long Beaked Echidnalive
in the New Guinea highlands
Short Beaked Echidna, Tachyglossus aculeatus.
Photo taken by Arpingstone at Bristol Museum
Longbeaked Echidna, Zaglossus bruijnitthat
Sketch by Dixi
Distribution map of Short Beaked Echidna,
The most widely distributed Australian mammal.
By Sémhur [GFDL (www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons.
2 termite cathedral mounds in the Northern Territory of Australia
