Without teeth to chew their prey, they grind food between their tongues and the bottoms of their mouths. Their tongues are so sticky and effective that they accidentally consume a lot of dirt while feeding, which is why their droppings are laced with soil.
Echidnas typically live up to 10 years in the wild, but have been recorded living 49 years in captivity. A baby Echidna is called a puggle. If threatened, an echidna will curl into a ball if on hard ground , lodge itself into a log or rock crevice, or quickly dig a shallow excavation, so that only its sharp spines are exposed — a very effective protection strategy.
Echidnas occur on most of our reserves. Liffey Valley is home to the Tasmanian subspecies, which has a particularly furry coat to survive the cold. We protect the habitat of echidnas by conserving native vegetation and hollow logs, managing total grazing pressure and easing predation by controlling feral animals such as cats and wild dogs. Donate today to help us continue this and other vital conservation work. Most of our operating costs are funded by generous individuals. Skip to Content.
Short-beaked Echidna. Home Species Echidna. Even their corneas have special layers of kertain to protect their eyes from ant bites and debris, while digging. It looks like you're using Internet Explorer 11 or older. This website works best with modern browsers such as the latest versions of Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Edge. If you continue with this browser, you may see unexpected results.
General Appearance Body A medium-sized mammal Augee et al. Pure white and even red-headed echidnas have been spotted on Kangaroo Island. A smaller, younger male is often at the rear of the line. Echidnas alternate which heads they use when mating with different partners to improve their chances of becoming a dad! Almost a month after mating, the female deposits a single, soft-shelled, leathery egg into her pouch. The gestation period is quite quick — after only ten days the baby echidna hatches.
In contrast, male echidnas secrete a milky substance from their spurs during breeding season. Rather than acting as a poison, the echidna substance likely serves as a means of scent communication, a study in the journal PLOS ONE found. The echidna's genetic makeup does code for four peptides that are also found in platypus venom, the researchers found.
But these genes are not highly expressed in the echidna, indicating "that they are the remnants of the evolutionary history of the ancestral venom gland," the researchers wrote in the study.
Echidnas are found only in Australia and New Guinea. They have the widest distribution of any native mammal in Australia and prefer alpine meadows, coastal forest and interior deserts, according to the San Diego Zoo. Echidnas are very solitary animals, but they are not territorial and are willing to share their home range with others of their kind. They are active during the day, but in warmer months they will often become nocturnal to avoid the heat.
Echidnas have body temperatures of 89 degrees Fahrenheit 32 Celsius and very slow metabolisms. This is thought to be one of the reasons why they live up to 50 years, according to National Geographic. Echidnas hibernate during the cold winter months in burrows.
Echidnas have no teeth and only eat termites, ants and other soil invertebrates.
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