Echidna: Modern Enigma

Summary: Ech-what? Echindas are mammals that break all the rules of Nature! Join Kiersten as she takes us on a journey into the weird world of the echidna.

 

For my hearing impaired listeners, a complete transcript of this podcast follows the show notes on Podbean

 

Show Notes: 

“The Princeton Encyclopedia of Mammals,” edited by David W. Macdonald

Echidna Fact Sheet, March 18, 2022. PBS Nature. https://ww.pbs.org

“The Creature Feature: 10 Fun Facts About the Echidna,” by Mary Bates, Wired, Jul 3, 2014.

Short-beaked Echidna. Bush Heritage Australia, https://www.bushheritage.org.au

Music written and performed by Katherine Camp

Transcript

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Kiersten - This is Ten Things I Like About…a ten minute, ten episode podcast about unknown or misunderstood wildlife.

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Kiersten - Welcome to Ten Things I Like About… This is a podcast about misunderstood or unknown creatures in nature. Some we’ll find right out side our doors and some are continents away but all are fascinating. 

My name is Kiersten and I have a Master’s Degree in Animal Behavior and did my thesis on the breeding behavior of the Tri-colored bat. I was a zookeeper for many years and have worked with all sorts of animals from Aba Aba fish to tigers to ravens to domesticated dogs and so many more in between. Many of those years were spent in education programs and the most important lesson I learned was that the more information someone has about a particular animal the less they fear them. The less they fear them the more they crave information about them and before you know it you’ve become an advocate for that misunderstood animal.

This podcast will focus ten, ten minute episodes on different animals and their amazing characteristics. Please join me on this extraordinary journey, you won’t regret it.

This is the first episode of the next Ten Things I Like About…series. These ten episodes will be about the echidna! Ech-what? You say? The echidna. It’s an animal found in Australia, Tasmania, and New Guinea. You know what that means…It’s gonna be cool! And the mere existence of the echidna is the first thing I like about this exceptional animal. 

The echidna, also known as the spiny anteater, is an animal that bends the rules that nature has established. It is a mammal, but it reproduces by laying eggs. It feeds it young milk that is produces itself, but has no nipples. It has a pouch like a kangaroo but it is not a marsupial. The echidna is definitely a modern enigma.

Let’s start off with what the echidna looks like. It’s kind of a combination between an anteater, a hedgehog, and the Niffler from Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. Not at all kidding. Okay here is my best attempt at a verbal description. 

Echidnas have a long beak like snout with a small nose and mouth at the end. Their eyes sit farther back on the face and are surrounded by dark brown fur that is generously laced with long thick light brown or yellow spines. They have large, long claws on their from feet to help dig into the soil. Their body is round and covered with the dark fur and spines. They do have a tail but you hardly notice it because of the spines. Their back feet also have claws but not quite as long as the front feet. They are short and hug the ground as they waddle around. They can grown to 35-75 centimeters or 14 to 30 inches with a 4 inch tail, depending on species. They can weigh between 5.5 to 22 pounds, once again depending on species. They really are quite a strange looking animal, but absolutely fascinating! And boy oh boy do they have cute little faces.

There are four species of echidna. The short-beaked echidna (Tachyglossus aculeates), the Sir David’s long-beaked echidna (Zaglossus attenboroughi), the eastern long-beaked echidna (Zaglossus bartoni), and the western long-beaked echidna (Zaglossus bruijnii).

The short-beaked echidna also known as the common echidna ranges in size from 12-18 inches or 35-40 cm. They can weigh 5 1/2 to 17 lbs or 2 1/2 to 8kg. Males of this species can be up to 25% larger than females. They can range in color from black to light brown with spines on the back and along the sides. They have a long, narrow, hairless snout. 

The western long-beaked echidna also known as the long-nosed echidna can be 18 to 35 inches or 45-90 cm. They can weigh between 11 to 22 lbs or 5-10kg. The coat color can also range from black to brown. They do have spines but they are shorter than other species’ and are often hidden by their longer fur. They have a very long snout that is curved slightly downward at the tip. 

Not much is known about the Sir David’s long-beaked echidna. It is the smallest of the long-beaked echidna’s. There is only a single specimen of this species of echidna collected by a Dutch explorer in 1961 in the Cyclops mountains of Indonesia. 

The eastern long-beaked echidnas is very similar to our short-beaked echidna except with a longer snout. There are several different subspecies listed under this echidna that may, with further research, turnout to be separate species altogether.

Those of you that have been listening from the beginning know how much I like to talk taxonomy! No really. I do find taxonomy interesting but also a little tedious. I am going to walk you through this with the echidna though because it leads us into why I chose to include echidnas in Ten Things I Like About…

We’re going to start at the beginning with our taxonomy: 

Kingdom: Animalia

Phylum: Chordata

Class: Mammalia

Order (this is where is gets really cool or weird): Monotremata (more on this in a moment)

Family: Tachyglossidae 

Genus: Tachyglossus and Zaglossus

Let’s hop back to the Order of the echidna, Monotremata. What exactly is that? It’s what makes echidnas so special in the animal kingdom. Monotremes are mammals. Think back with me to those days in elementary science class when we learned what constituted a mammal. A mammal has hair somewhere on its body and it produces milk to feed its young. Well the echidna has both of these, actually we can go even farther and say that the echidna checks off more mammalian boxes. They also have a single bone in the lower jaw, and three bones in the ear. All of these are characteristics of mammals.

What makes monotremes so special is that they lays eggs instead of giving live birth. You may have caught that in my opening. Yes! Echidnas are mammals that lay eggs! The only other mammal alive today that lays eggs is the platypus, and yes they are also found in Australia. 

Monotremata actually means “one-holed creature“. Echidnas and platypus have one opening in their body that acts as the entrance and the exit you could say. Bodily fluids, such as feces, exit through this opening called the cloaca and mating happens through this opening, as well. 

Most mammals are also endothermic which means the body temperature is controlled internally. Like Humans, we have a constant body temperature of about 98 degrees F, give or take a few degrees. It’s a constant temperature whether it’s cold in our environment or hot in our environment. Echidnas are the same but they have the lowest recorded body temperature of any mammal. At 89 degrees F or 32 degrees Celsius the echidna is quite the anomaly. We don’t really know why but their body temperature can vary by up to 8 degrees throughout the day!. 

 

Okay, I hope I have whet your appetite for more information about this unbelievable animal because their mere existence is only my first favorite thing about the echidna. 

If you're enjoying this podcast please recommend me to friends and family and take a moment to give me a rating on whatever platform your listening. It will help me reach more listeners and give the animals I talk about an even better chance at change. 

 

Join me next week for another thing I like about the echidna.  

 

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This has been an episode of Ten Things I like About with Kiersten and Company. Original music written and performed by Katherine Camp, piano extraordinaire.