THE short-beaked echidna is the Goulburn Broken Catchment Management Authority's critter of the month.
GBCMA project officer Janice Mentiplay-Smith said the short-beaked echidna belonged to a very select branch of the mammalian family tree – it’s classified as a monotreme, an egg-laying mammal, along with the platypus.
“Nature is quite amazing,” Ms Mentiplay-Smith said.
“The echidna’s unique style of reproduction means the female lays a single egg, normally associated with birds and reptiles and incubates it in her pouch, which we associate with marsupials.
"After just 10 days the echidna’s small leathery egg hatches to reveal a jellybean-sized baby called a puggle.
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“From inside its mother's pouch, the puggle feeds on fatty milk for two or three months, until its spines become too sharp."
Ms Mentiplay-Smith explained the mother then leaves her tiny puggle in a purpose-built burrow and will feed it until weaned at around six months of age.
She described the echidna as "somewhat of a loner".
“[It is] a solitary creature that roams across large, overlapping home ranges of up to 50 hectares," she said.
"Only when the female is raising her puggle in a burrow does the Echidna remain in one area for a length of time.”
The echidna feeds on termites, ants, and other insects.
It uses its sticky 17-centimetre-long tongue to scoop up the scurrying ‘moving feasts’ - along with a good measure of gravel and soil.
Thanks to its body armour, the Echidna has few natural predators.
When threatened, it will curl into a ball and tightly wedge itself into a crevice to expose its threatening spines.
The echidna is a competent swimmer and will traverse bodies of water, using its little snout as a snorkel.
As with much of Australia’s wildlife, road traffic is a major danger for echidnas, so it is important to remain vigilant on the roads.
An echidna’s sharp spines are not friendly towards car tyres either; another good reason to drive with wildlife in mind.
