What is an echidna?

The echidna is a small spiny egg-laying mammal that, alongside the platypus, is one of the only two kinds of living monotreme in the world. The short-beaked echidna is found across all of Australia, from the alpine snow country to the central deserts, while the longer-beaked echidnas survive only in the highlands of New Guinea.

Adult short-beaked echidnas weigh 2 to 7 kilograms and grow to about 30 to 45 centimetres long. They are covered in coarse fur and a dense layer of sharp spines, and curl into a ball or wedge themselves into rocks and logs when threatened. They feed on ants, termites, and other small invertebrates, which they detect with sensitive receptors in their long snout and lap up with a sticky 18-centimetre-long tongue.

Echidnas mate in winter, when males form trains of up to ten suitors that follow a single female for days or weeks. After mating, the female lays a single soft, leathery egg directly into a temporary pouch she develops on her belly. The egg hatches after about 10 days into a tiny puggle, which stays in the pouch drinking milk for about two months before being deposited in a burrow.

Echidnas are remarkably adaptable. They can lower their body temperature to near-zero during very cold weather and survive bushfires by retreating into burrows. They live up to 50 years in captivity, an unusually long lifespan for a mammal of their size. The echidna appears on the Australian five-cent coin and was the mascot, alongside the platypus and the kookaburra, of the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games. The species is not threatened and remains common across Australia.