How Do Echidnas Work?

Echidnas are spiny, toothless, egg-laying mammals -- and they only get weirder from there. Learn more about them in this episode of BrainStuff, based on this article: https://animals.howstuffworks.com/mammals/echidna.htm

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of I Heart Radio,
Hey brain Stuff Lauren vogebam here a. While be a
kidnap is considered a mammal because it's warm blooded, has
hair on its body, and produces milk for its young.
This large hedgehog like creature is in a class of
its own or very nearly. Kitnas are monotreames that means

(00:25):
they're mammals that lay eggs. For that reason, they're named
after mythological monsters. In Greek mythology, Kitna was a half woman,
half snake creature perceived to have qualities of both mammals
and reptiles. There are only five species of monotreams in
the world, four species of a chidnas, plus the duck
billed platypus. The kidnap also has its own distinct look.

(00:50):
For the article. This episode is based on hows to Work.
Spoke by email with Rick Schwartz, San Diego Zoo Global Ambassador.
He said the body of a short peaked to kidna
has dark fur, almost completely hidden by a covering of hollow,
barblous quills called spines on its back and sides, while
long beaked kidneys have little fur and more visible spines.

(01:12):
The Beiesian black spines on all a kidney species are
about two inches or five centimeters long and help camouflage
the kidney in the brush. They have very short legs,
ideal for digging. Kidneys have a tiny face with small
eyes and long or short noses, sometimes called beaks. Their
body is quite stocky, measuring from fifteen to thirty inches

(01:34):
long that's thirty five to seventy cis and weighing for
five to twenty pounds that's two to twenty kilos. With
those spines, they do look a bit like a hedgehog
or porcupine mixed with an ant eater, but they aren't
closely related to any of the above. The spines are
made of caratin, like our pair and fingernails, and are
a defensive measure against predators. If they can't run or hide,

(01:57):
they can curl up into a spiny ball. They're found
throughout Australia, Tasmania, and New Guinea, from the highlands to
the deserts to the forests. The kidneys eat ants, grubs,
and termites, so digging for food is key. Areas with
loose top soil are ideal, though they can plow through
hard packed dirt as well, and they also take advantage

(02:19):
of a very strong sense of smell to locate their
food underground or beneath wood or leaf litter. And they
also have a sixth sense that's most often associated with sharks,
electro reception, a specialized cells in their faces are sensitive
to the electromagnetic signals that living things make when they
move around. They're the only land mammals that have this sense. However,

(02:42):
what they don't have is teeth. Instead, they use their sticky, long,
slender tongue to catch their food, but they do chew
in a way. A short said hard pads at the
base of the tongue and on the roof of its
mouth grind food into a paste for swallowing. A kid
This have the lowest body temperature of any mammal, around

(03:03):
eighty nine point six fahrenheit that's thirty two celsius. Schwartz
explained their long lifespans up to fifty years and managed
settings are due to their low body temperature and slow metabolism.
A kidnap reading season is during July and August winter
in Australia, and their courtship rituals are complex. Schwartz said

(03:25):
male a kidnas often line up behind a female nose
to tail, forming long trains up to ten a kidness long.
When the female is finally ready to mate, the males
dig a trench in the ground around her. The males
compete for mating honors by pushing each other out of
the trench. The last one remaining gets to mate with
the female. Female kidnas have a two branched reproductive tract

(03:48):
and male a kidnas have a four headed penis to match,
and Schwartz explained during sex, two of the heads shut
down while the other two grow bigger. A kidnas alternate
which heads they use when mating with different partners to
improve their chances of becoming a father. An adult female
kidna usually lays a single leathery egg once a year.

(04:10):
Schwartz said. She rolls the newly laid egg, about the
size of a grape, into a deep pocket or pouch
on her belly to keep it safe, and ten days later,
the baby a kidna called a puggle hatches. It weighs
only about half as much as a miniature marshmallow, and
the puggle uses its tiny sea through claws to grip
the special hairs within the mother's pouch. The mother does

(04:32):
not have nipples the way other mammals do. Instead, the
little puggle laps at milk that the mother's body secretes
from special glands in her pouch, he continued. Fortunately for
the mother, the puggle does not yet have spines sticking out.
It remains in the pouch until its spines begin to
break through its skin at about fifty three days. Then

(04:53):
the mother puts the puggle into a burrow, where she
returns to feed it every five to ten days until
it's big enough to go out on its own at
about seven months old. Today's episode is based on the
article the Kidna is one of the World's Strangest Mammals
on how stuff Works dot Com, written by Wendy Bowman.

(05:13):
Brain Stuff is production by Heart Radio and partnership with
how stuff works dot Com, and it's produced by Tyler Clang.
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