Photo Matt Appleby. How do you know when echidnas are breeding? Just look for a female being trailed by one to ten males. This can last for weeks at a time. The female will then lay a single, leathery egg. Only 0. When the egg is the size of a jellybean, the young echidna — the puggle — hatches from the egg. The puggle leaves the pouch when it grows spines, at about three months old.
Adult echidnas eat ants and termites, and sometimes feast on earthworms, beetles and moth larvae. 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.
They are also extremely strong, can climb well and are great escape artists! It is important that they are always placed into an appropriate container such as a tall plastic container e. Layers of towels should be placed on the bottom. Echidnas will often avoid capture by digging themselves into the soil or other tight spots. It is very difficult to remove them without digging them out physically. NEVER use a shovel to dig an echidna out — only ever use your hands to prevent accidental injury to the animal.
To remove the echidna, place a hand just behind the forelimbs on the underbelly. Echidnas can also be picked up when rolled into a ball with thick leather gloves to protect your hands. For those that are not experienced with handling echidnas, the use of a pair good quality leather gloves are strongly recommended. Alternatively, use a thick towel folded over and wrap this around the echidna to pick it up.
Please note: unlike the platypus the echidna does not have a venomous spur. Common Reasons for Care Echidna in the yard. Dogs often raise the alarm about an echidna in the yard. Echidnas are very quiet animals they do not vocalise at all and move around mostly at night. It is important that you contain your dog and leave the echidna to find its own way out of your yard.
Generally, if it was able to get into your yard, then it will be able to find its way back out. Echidnas are very secretive animals so they will not move on until they feel that it is safe to do so.
If they sense any disturbance such as people or animals nearby , they will remain stationary and will not move on. If you feel confident to do so, you can pick the echidna up and move it out of your yard into nearby bushland, however it is vital that echidnas are NOT moved more than metres. Remember that they have very strong home ranges and if a female, they may have a baby in a burrow nearby. Moving the echidna away from the area will be a death sentence to the baby.
Any echidna that has been hit by a vehicle must come into care for a full veterinary assessment. The most common injury found in road trauma echidnas is a fractured beak; this is not easily identifiable without an x-ray. Speaking of which, these guys love nothing more than a satisfying meal of ants, termites, worms and insect larvae — and have been known to eat roughly 40, per day!
This is primarily attributed to their low body temperature and oh-so-slow metabolism. In fact, they have a maximum speed of 2. As mentioned earlier, echidnas fall into the extremely rare category of monotremes — quite the anomaly and different to any other mammal as they lay eggs and have no teats.
Once a female echidna lays the egg into her pouch, it will hatch after roughly 10 days of incubation — coming out the size of a jellybean, blind and hairless! Appearances can be deceiving when it comes to the echidna… while they might look fearsome lending to their spiny exterior, these animals are actually quite shy, on the contrary.
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