Animal · Australia, Papua New Guinea, Indonesia
Short-beaked echidna
Tachyglossus aculeatus — the name this animal has in the language scientists everywhere share.
The short-beaked echidna is a spiny Australian mammal that lays eggs, has no teeth at all and licks up ants with a long, sticky tongue. When it is frightened it digs straight down until only a shield of spines shows.
Picture credit: Donald Hobern (CC BY 2.0) · Charles J. Sharp (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Wikimedia Commons
Where does the short-beaked echidna live?
Home: Forests, heath and dry scrub across Australia.
In the wild it lives in these countries: Australia, Papua New Guinea, Indonesia.
Conservation status from the IUCN: not in danger.
The short profile
Fully grown: 30-45 cm long, spines up to 5 cm. It weighs about 4 kilograms. On the menu: insects.
The story behind it
The echidna belongs to a tiny group: only five kinds of mammal lay eggs, the platypus, the three long-beaked echidnas and this one. A female lays a single soft, leathery egg straight into a pouch on her belly, and about ten days later a young hatches that is small enough to sit on a teaspoon. Adults have no teeth. They rip open ant and termite nests with strong claws, then flick the tongue in and out roughly a hundred times a minute and crush the insects between hard pads inside the mouth. An echidna in danger does not run away. It digs straight down until only a cushion of spines is left above ground, or wedges itself under a rock so firmly that nothing can pull it out.
Find it on the globe
Short-beaked echidna is there as a tiny animated figure that breathes and looks around. From far away the planet is only a blue ball; detail arrives as you zoom in, and this one appears once you are close enough. Open it on the globe.
It sits at its real coordinates, not near them — the same numbers listed in the facts above. Switch off the layer for this kind of place and it disappears again; the buttons for that are down the right-hand edge.
Questions children ask
Does an echidna really lay eggs?
Yes. The female lays one small, leathery egg straight into a pouch on her belly, and it hatches about ten days later. Only the echidnas and the platypus do this; every other mammal gives birth to live young.
What does an echidna eat?
Mainly ants and termites, plus beetle grubs and worms. It has no teeth: it catches insects on a tongue that shoots far out of its snout and then grinds them between hard pads inside its mouth.
How does an echidna protect itself?
It rolls into a ball of spines, or on soft ground sinks straight down by digging with all four feet until only its spiny back shows. Wedged under a rock it can hold on so tightly that it cannot be pulled free.
Where these numbers come from
Every figure on this page was checked against public reference sources before publication. Where sources genuinely disagree, the text says so.
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