Echidna

The Visitor
I normally don’t appreciate being woken up at 1:00 am but last night was an exception. The dogs were barking and growling outside our bedroom window so I got up to investigate. It was a beautiful balmy night. The stars were blazing in the clear sky and the ghostly Wandoo gleamed in the silvery moonlight. There was just enough light to make out a low dark shape about half a metre long being harassed by the dogs. I put the dogs inside and took a closer look at our interesting visitor. He was an Australian short beaked echidna out foraging for termites.

We have a lot of echidnas on our property but we don’t often see them. We see their diggings everywhere but they are secretive and elusive and during the day will be hiding in a hollow log or buried in the leaf litter. They are very powerful diggers and use their strong short legs and claws to break open fallen timber in their search for termites which they mop up by the thousands with their sticky tongues. They are found in all parts of Australia but their numbers have plummeted in many places due to land clearing and predation from introduced foxes, despite their spiky armour which gives them some protection.

The echidna, along with its enigmatic platypus cousin, is a descendent of an early group of mammals called monotremes with reptilian characteristics such as fused shoulders and egg laying reproduction. It is a mistake, however, to think of an echidna as a primitive animal. It evolved relatively recently from a platypus ancestor between 19 and 48 million years ago and it has an exceptionally large brain and high intelligence. It is interesting to speculate how natural selection could have transformed an aquatic worm eating platypus type creature with a rubbery “duck bill” into a terrestrial animal with a fused beak feeding almost exclusively on termites. The intermediates are no longer with us but the worm eating long beaked echidna of Papua New Guinea is much closer to the platypus in its appearance and behavior gives us some clue as to how it could have happened.


I saw this evening magnificent
Echidna busy bustling
Pushing through leaves rustling
On the termite scent
A vision heaven sent
Glorious creature muscling
Single minded hustling
Nemesis of the white ant

Dense fur and white spines glistening
Powerful claw foot digger
With head cocked as though listening

Spiky fox repeller
With hidden eyes and snout protruding
Most welcome visitor