Colours of Wildlife: Western Long-Beaked Echidna
Created | Updated Jan 5, 2014
Western Long-Beaked Echidna
Willem is a wildlife artist based in South Africa. He says "My aim is simply to express the beauty and wonder that is in Nature, and to heighten people's appreciation of plants, animals and the wilderness. Not everything I paint is African! Though I've never been there, I'm also fascinated by Asia and I've done paintings of Asian rhinos and birds as well. I may in future do some of European, Australian and American species too. I'm fascinated by wild things from all over the world! I mainly paint in watercolours. . . but actually many media including 'digital' paintings with the computer!"
This is a Western Long-Beaked Echidna, Zaglossus bruijni. It is one of the egg-laying mammals, the platypus being another. There are three other species of echidna, two more long-beaked ones and the Short-beaked Echidna of Australia.
Mother of Monsters
Echidnas are named after a Greek mythological monstrous being. Echidna looked like a young woman above, with a serpent's body below. She supposedly birthed many other monsters. Real-life echidnas don't really resemble her at all! They are just very, very weird, rather than being monstrous. Like the platypus, they have what seems like a mix of mammalian, reptilian and avian features. Their toothless beaks look very much like the bills of birds; their hair and spines clearly show them to be mammals, and their leathery-skinned eggs are very much like those of reptiles. While platypuses don't have visible external ears, echidna ears are large openings at the side of their heads without the pinnae or ear flaps found in most other mammals.
Fossil Monotremes
There are many differences between echidnas and platypuses. The Monotremes, the group containing them both, has a fossil history going back to the Cretaceous; most of the older fossils are more platypus-like than echidna-like. Apparently the echidnas developed from aquatic ancestors, re-adapting to a fully terrestrial way of life. Using the molecular clock method, looking at genetic differences and based on those estimating how much time the evolution must have needed, the split between echidnas and platypuses must have happened between 48 and 19 million years ago. A few extinct echidnas are known from fossils; Megalibgwillia goes back to the Miocene (23-5 million years ago) but the last one died out in the Pleistocene, about 50 000 years ago. A giant long-beaked echidna, Zaglossus hacketti, lived in Western Australia until quite recently. It reached a bodyweight of about 30 kg/66 lbs, and was the largest monotreme we know of.
Long-Beaked Probers
The western long-beaked echidna is the largest living monotreme; it reaches an overall length of a metre/yard, and a bodyweight of 16.5 kg/35 lbs. Compared to the short-beaked echidna of Australia, it stands much higher on its legs, has a much longer, slightly downcurved 'beak', and shorter spines half-hidden amidst its fur. It has long claws on its fore- and hindfeet. Its hind feet are turned outward so the curved claws project sideways, not hindering it while it walks. While the short-beaked echidna eats ants and termites, using its claws to dig into their nests, long-beaked echidnas eat mostly earthworms, probing into the soil with their long beaks.
In my article on the platypus you'll read about the amazing electro-sensors it has on its beak. The long-beaked echidnas have similar receptors on the tips of their snouts, which presumably also help them to detect prey in the soil, as they probe with their beaks. They have less sensors than platypuses do, though. They use smell, heat and touch sense as well to find their prey. When they sense a worm or grub they'll extend their long tongues; at the tip of the tongue there are tiny but sharp spines with which the prey item is grabbed and pulled into the tiny mouth. Echidnas don't have teeth; the soft-bodied prey is swallowed whole, and ground up in the stomach.
The genus Zaglossus contains two more species, the Eastern Long-Beaked Echidna, Zaglossus bartoni, and Sir David's Long-Beaked Echidna, Zaglossus attenboroughi (go on, guess after whom this one was named). All of them live on the huge island of New Guinea. The western one lives, as you might gather, in the western part of the island; the eastern one, eastward from there along the central mountain range, and Sir David's long-beaked echidna is only known from the Cyclops Mountains in the north of the island. All three species are rare. They all live in montane regions, in cool forests and sometimes ranging into highland meadows and scrub.
A Zaglossus from Australia?
There is one intriguing record of the Western Long-Beaked Echidna from Australia! There is a skin with a few elements of the skeleton that was collected by John T. Tunney, who said he collected the specimen in the region of Kimberley, Western Australia, in 1901. He was a conscientious collector who clearly labelled his specimens and provided info on them, and therefore this is very unlikely to be mislabeled or misattributed. It would be intriguing if this species did indeed live in Australia as recently as this … indeed, if the specimen did come from there, then maybe these long-beaked echidnas are still around! But so far, no other living Australian individuals have been found. But the genus is known as fossils from all over Australia, and similar animals are portrayed in ancient aboriginal rock-art.
Weird Reproduction
Being a mammal that lays eggs is weird enough, but echidnas go even farther than that! The male echidna has a penis with spines along the shaft and with four heads! Only two of these are used at a time, though. When it mates with a female, two heads inflate and the other two remain small. The female echidna has a two-branched reproductive tract, and the two erect penis heads go into the two separate branches. The next time the male mates, he will use the other two heads so all of them get equally used.
Although the female echidna has two ovaries, only one egg develops at a time. Two weeks after mating she lays the egg into a rearward-facing pouch on her belly. She keeps the egg here for ten days, after which the baby echidna, called a puggle, will hatch. The puggle stays in the pouch for two or three months more. She feeds it with milk that trickles from glands that open in patches called areolae from which the puggle sucks it up. When the puggle's spines develop, it is ejected from the pouch but it will suckle from its mother for a while longer, up to the age of about seven months.
Echidnas have a slow resting metabolism, and a somewhat lower body temperature than most other mammals. Their energy needs are consequently not very high. They can live surprisingly long, up to 50 years or perhaps even more.
