Short-beaked echidna
The short-beaked echidna is the only member of the genus Tachyglossus. It is covered in fur and spines and has a distinctive snout and a specialized tongue, which it uses to catch its insect prey at a great speed. The species is found throughout Australia, where it is the most widespread native mammal.
About Short-beaked echidna in brief
The short-beaked echidna is the only member of the genus Tachyglossus. It is covered in fur and spines and has a distinctive snout and a specialized tongue, which it uses to catch its insect prey at a great speed. The species is found throughout Australia, where it is the most widespread native mammal, and in coastal and highland regions of eastern New Guinea. Human activities, such as hunting, habitat destruction, and the introduction of foreign predatory species and parasites, have reduced its distribution in Australia. The earliest fossils of the short- beaked echidna date back around 15 million years ago to the Miocene epoch. The oldest specimens were found in caves in South Australia, often with fossils from the same period. The echidnas are believed to have evolutionally diverged from the platypus around 66million years ago, between the Cretaceous and Tertiary periods. This means that their ancestors are around 10% smaller than their contemporary descendants except for the dwarf-postle-Pleistocene. The name Tachy glossus means ‘quick tongue’ and aculeatus means ‘equipped with spines’ The name has undergone four revisions: from M. aculeata to Ornithorhynchus hystrix, Echidna hystrax, TachyGlossus aculeato and finally, Tachyonglossus aculatus. The five subspecies are each found in different geographical locations and differ from one another in their hairiness, spine length and width and the size of the grooming claws on their hind feet.
The subspecies also differ in the length of their tails and the number of teeth on their tongues. The female lays one egg a year and the male has no further contact with the female or his offspring after mating. It has no weapons or fighting ability but repels predators by curling into a ball and deterring them with its spines. It lacks the ability to sweat and cannot deal with heat well, so it tends to avoid daytime activity in hot weather. It can swim if needed. The snout has mechanoreceptors and electroreceptors that help it to detect its surroundings. It goes into deep torpor and hibernation during the Australian winter, reducing its metabolism to save energy. It lays eggs; the monotremes are the only group of mammals to do so. A newborn echidNA is the size. of a grape but grows rapidly on its mother’s milk, which is very rich in nutrients. It eventually grows too large and spiky to stay in the pouch and, around seven weeks after hatching, are expelled from the pouch into the mother’s burrow. At around six months of age, they leave the burrow and have no more contact with their mothers. They are all significantly larger than Zaglossus species, which include the western long-Beaked, Sir David’s long-beaky and eastern long- beaky echidnis, and their diets consist mostly of worms and grubs.
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This page is based on the article Short-beaked echidna published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 01, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
