Tuesday, 31 October 2023

Echidnas

Georgie PURCELL (Northern Victoria) (13:27): This week I am stoked to share some facts about our mighty spiky pal the echidna. The warmer spring weather brings out all sorts of mates we may not usually see, and on a recent hike on my favourite track at Mount Macedon near my home I was joined by a wonderful echidna and thought to myself that I simply must share their wonder with the world and with my colleagues. I have talked a lot about pouch-checking of macropods like kangaroos, but echidnas actually have pouches as well. Echidnas and platypuses are the only egg-laying mammals. After hatching, puggles remain in their mother’s pouch for almost two months, so please make sure you check on echidnas in need also. A solitary mammal, you will rarely see them in a group, but if you do it is known as a parade. As they cannot tolerate extreme temperatures, they will use the burrows of animals such as rabbits and wombats and will dig to hide when under threat. But I am most excited to share that recently I learned they can actually swim, as they evolved between 20 million and 50 million years ago, descending from a platypus-like mammal. So I hope that we can all look out for our spiky mates on land or in water this spring, just like our wonderful wildlife carers do.