Rattlesnake: Australia's most amazing animal. Order Monotreme or Oviparous

Echidna- a unique creation of nature. It's really true! The origin of these unique animals has been studied very superficially and many questions about their life are controversial and are still considered open.

• in appearance, the echidna looks like a hedgehog or, it also has almost the entire body covered with needles;
• echidna lays eggs to continue its kind, which is more typical for birds;
• she bears her offspring in a special bag, just as kangaroos do;
• but she eats in the same way as.
• with all this, echidna cubs feed on milk and belong to the class of mammals.

Therefore, they often talk about echidna as a "bird animal". Look at echidna photo, and much will become clear at a glance. What is this special creation, who is this echidna?

Echidna and platypus belong to the same order, which are known as monotremes (single pass). In nature, there are 2 varieties of echidna:

• spiny (Tasmanian, Australian)
• woolly (New Guinea)

The surface of the body is covered with needles, the length of which is about 6 centimeters. The color of the needles varies from white to dark brown, so the color of the animal is uneven.

In addition to needles, the echidna has brown hair, it is quite rough and tough. Particularly dense coat and quite long in the parotid region. The size of the echidna refers to small animals, about 40 centimeters.

Pictured is a woolly echidna

The head is small in size and almost immediately merges with the body. The muzzle is long and thin, and it ends with a small mouth - a tube, which is often called a beak. The echidna has a long and sticky tongue, but it has no teeth at all. In general, the beak helps the animal to navigate in space, as vision is very poor.

Echidna moves on four legs, they are small in size, but very strong, muscular. She has five fingers on each paw, which end in strong claws.

This unique miracle of nature, like it, can curl up and turn into a prickly ball. If there is some source of danger or threat to life nearby, then the echidna burrows into the loose soil with half of the body and exposes its needles as protection so that the enemy cannot get close to it.

Often you have to escape from dangers and flee, then strong paws come to the rescue, which provide quick movement to a safe shelter. In addition to being a good runner, the echidna is also good at swimming.

The nature and lifestyle of the echidna

Echidna lives in Australia, New Guinea and Tasmania. The life of the echidna was first described by George Shaw in 1792, and it was from that time that the observation of this animal began. However, echidnas are quite secretive and do not like interference in their lives, which greatly complicates study and research.

Not in vain word"Sneaky" means treacherous. So and animal echidna cunningly and cautiously, does not allow intrusion into his life. Australian echidnas prefer to lead a nocturnal lifestyle.

They live mainly in forests or areas with dense vegetation, where the animal feels protected under the cover of foliage and plants. Echidna can hide in thickets, tree roots, crevices in rocks, small caves, or in burrows that dig and.

In such shelters, the animal spends the hottest hours of the day, with the onset of the evening, when the coolness is already well felt, echidnas begin to lead an active life.

However, with the onset of cold weather, the life of the animal seems to slow down and for some time they can go into hibernation, although in general the echidna does not belong to the class of animals sleeping in winter. This behavior of the echidna is due to the lack of sweat glands, so it does not adapt well to different temperatures.

With a significant change in temperature, the animal becomes lethargic and inactive, sometimes it completely slows down the process of vital activity. The supply of subcutaneous fat provides the necessary nutrition to the body for a long time, sometimes it can last about 4 months.

In the photo, the echidna is in a defensive pose

Reproduction and lifespan

The breeding season, the so-called mating season, falls just in the Australian winter, which lasts from May to September. At other times, echidnas live alone, but with the onset of winter they gather in small groups, which usually consist of one female and several males (usually there are up to 6 males in one group).

For about a month, they have a so-called dating period, when the animals feed and live together in the same territory. After that, the males proceed to the stage of courting the female. This is usually shown by the animals sniffing each other and poking their noses into the tail of the only female member of their group.

When the female is ready to mate, the males surround her and begin a kind of wedding ritual, which consists in circling to dig a trench about 25 centimeters around the female.

Pictured is an echidna with a tiny egg

When everything is ready, the fights for the title of the most worthy begin, the males push each other out of the trench. The only one who will defeat everyone and will mate with the female.

About 3-4 weeks after mating has occurred, the female is ready to lay an egg. The echidna always lays only one egg. The echidna's pouch appears only at this time, and then disappears again.

The egg is about the size of a pea and fits in the mother's pouch. Exactly how this process occurs is still debated by scientists. After about 8-12 days, a cub is born, but for the next 50 days from the moment of birth, it will still be in the bag.

Pictured is a baby echidna

The echidna mother then finds a safe place where she leaves her cub and visits him about once a week to feed him. Thus another 5 months pass. Then the time comes when echidna children ready for independent adult life and no longer needs maternal care and care.

Echidna can reproduce no more than once every two years, or even less often, but the nature of life expectancy is approximately 13-17 years. This is considered to be quite high. However, there were cases when echidnas in the zoo lived up to 45 years.

Echidna food

The diet of echidnas includes termites, small worms, and sometimes malus. To get food, the echidna digs up an anthill or termite mound, rips off the bark of trees where insects hide, moves small stones under which worms can usually be found, or simply combs the forest floor from leaves, moss and small branches with its nose.

As soon as the prey is found, a long tongue comes into play, to which the insect or sticks. The echidna does not have teeth to grind its prey, but its digestive system is designed so that it has special keratin teeth that rub against the palate.

Thus, the process of "chewing" food takes place. In addition, grains of sand, small pebbles and earth get into the body of the echidna, which also help grind food in the stomach of the animal.

Everyone knows about mammals from the school curriculum. Did you know that an egg-laying mammal is a separate species of animal that lives only on the territory of one continent - Australia? Let's look at this special kind of animal in more detail.

Discovery of oviparous

For a long time, the existence of animals unique in their kind that breed by incubating eggs was not known. The first message about these creatures came to Europe in the 17th century. At this time, the skin of a marvelous creature with a beak, covered with wool, was brought from Australia. It was a platypus. The alcoholized copy was brought only 100 years later. The fact is that platypuses practically do not tolerate captivity. It is very difficult for them to create conditions during transportation. Therefore, observations of them were carried out only in the natural environment.

Following the discovery of the platypus, news came of another creature with a beak, only now it is covered with needles. This is an echidna. For a long time, scientists argued about which class to classify these two creatures. And they came to the conclusion that the platypus and echidna should be placed in a separate detachment. This is how the detachment One-pass, or cloacal, appeared.

Amazing platypus

A unique creature of its kind, leading a nocturnal lifestyle. The platypus is distributed only in Australia and Tasmania. The animal lives half in the water, that is, it builds holes with access to the water and to land, and also feeds in the water. A creature of small size - up to 40 centimeters. It has, as already mentioned, a duck nose, but at the same time it is soft and covered with skin. Only in appearance it is very similar to a duck. There is also a 15 cm tail, similar to a beaver's tail. The paws are webbed, but at the same time they do not prevent the platypus from walking on the ground and digging holes perfectly.

Since the genitourinary system and intestines exit the animal into one hole, or cloaca, it was assigned to a separate species - cloacae. It is interesting that the platypus, unlike ordinary mammals, swims with the help of its front paws, and the hind legs serve as a rudder. Among other things, let's pay attention to how it reproduces.

Platypus breeding

An interesting fact: before breeding, animals hibernate for 10 days, and only after that the mating season begins. It lasts almost the entire autumn, from August to November. Platypuses mate in the water, and after a two-week period, the female lays an average of 2 eggs. Males do not participate in the later life of offspring.

The female builds a special hole (up to 15 meters long) with a nest at the end of the tunnel. Lines it with raw leaves and stems to maintain a certain humidity so that the eggs do not dry out. Interestingly, for protection, she also builds a barrier wall 15 centimeters thick.

Only after the preparatory work, she lays eggs in the nest. The platypus incubates eggs by curling up around them. After 10 days, babies are born, naked and blind, like all mammals. The female feeds the babies with milk, which flows from the pores directly through the fur into the grooves and accumulates in them. Babies lick milk and thus feed. Feeding lasts about 4 months, and then the kids learn to get food on their own. It was the method of reproduction that gave this species the name "egg-laying mammal".

extraordinary echidna

Echidna is also an egg-laying mammal. This is a land creature of small size, reaching up to 40 centimeters. It also lives in Australia, Tasmania and the islands of New Guinea. In appearance, this animal looks like a hedgehog, but with a long narrow beak, not exceeding 7.5 centimeters. Interestingly, the echidna has no teeth, and it catches prey with the help of a long sticky tongue.

The body of the echidna is covered on the back and sides with spines, which were formed from coarse wool. Wool covers the belly, head and paws is fully adapted for a certain type of food. It feeds on termites, ants and small insects. She leads a daytime lifestyle, although it is not easy to find her. The fact is that she has a low body temperature, up to 32 degrees, and this does not allow her to endure a decrease or increase in ambient temperature. In this case, the echidna becomes lethargic and rests under trees or hibernates.

Echidna breeding method

Echidna is an egg-laying mammal, but it was only possible to prove this at the beginning of the 21st century. The mating games of echidnas are interesting. There are up to 10 males per female. When she decides she's ready to mate, she lays down on her back. At the same time, males dig a trench around it and begin to fight for supremacy. The one who turned out to be stronger copulates with the female.

Pregnancy lasts up to 28 days and ends with the appearance of one egg, which the female moves to the brood fold. It is still not clear how the female moves the egg into the bag, but after 10 days the baby appears. The cub comes into the world incompletely formed.

Young

The birth of such a baby is very similar to the birth of young marsupials. They also pass their final development in the mother's pouch and leave her as adults, ready for independent life. An interesting fact: marsupials are also common only in Australia.

How does the baby echidna appear? He is blind and naked, his hind limbs are not developed, his eyes are covered with a leathery film, and fingers are formed only on the front paws. It takes a baby 4 hours to get to milk. Interestingly, in the mother's pouch there are 100-150 pores that secrete milk through special hairs. The kid just needs to get to them.

The baby is in the mother's pouch for about 2 months. He gains weight very quickly due to nutritious milk. Echidna's milk is the only one that has a pink color due to the large amount of iron in it. Feeding continues up to 6.5 months. After the young growth learns to get food on its own.

prochidna

Prochidna is another egg-laying mammal. This creature is much larger than its counterparts. The habitat is the north of New Guinea and the islands of Indonesia. The size of the prochidna is impressive, up to 80 centimeters, while its weight is up to 10 kilograms. It looks like a echidna, but the beak is much longer and the needles are much shorter. She lives in mountainous areas and feeds mostly on worms. The structure of the oral cavity of the prochidna is interesting: her tongue has teeth, and with the help of it she is able not only to chew food, but, as has been noted, even to turn over stones.

This species is the least studied, as it lives in the mountains. But at the same time, it was noticed that the animal does not lose mobility in any weather, does not hibernate and knows how to regulate its own body temperature. Reproduction of egg-laying mammals, to which the prochidna belongs, occurs in the same way as in the other two species. She hatches only one egg, which is placed in a bag on her stomach, and feeds the cub with milk.

Comparative characteristics

Now let's look at the types of mammals that live on the Australian continent. So, what is the difference between oviparous, marsupial and placental mammals? To begin with, it must be said that all mammals feed their offspring with milk. But the birth of babies has huge differences.

Oviparous animals have one thing in common. They lay eggs like birds and incubate them for a certain amount of time. After the birth of the offspring, the mother's body produces milk, which the babies eat. It should be noted that the cubs do not suck milk, but lick it from the grooves on the female's stomach. The absence of nipples distinguishes oviparous from other mammals.

They have a pouch, hence their name. The pouch is located on the abdomen of females. A newborn baby, having reached it, finds a nipple and, as it were, hangs on it. The fact is that babies are born unformed and spend several more months in their mother's pouch until they are fully developed. It must be said that oviparous and marsupial mammals are similar in this respect. Echidna and prochidna babies are also born underdeveloped and placed in a kind of brood fold.

What about placental mammals? Their babies are born fully formed due to the presence of a placenta in the uterus. Due to it, the process of nutrition and development of the cub takes place. The majority of animals are placental.

Such a variety of species exists on one continent.

Echidna- a mammal of the oviparous order. Forms a family of the same name. There are two main species, the Australian echidna and the Tasmanian echidna. They live in Australia, Tasmania and New Guinea.

Echidna is a small animal, no more than 40 cm in size. The muzzle is narrow, pointed. The mouth is small. The body is covered with hair and sharp needles up to 6 cm long. The tip of the small tail is also covered with needles.

Echidnas became known to science relatively recently, at the end of the 18th century, like the closest relative of echidna - .

The main feature of the echidna and the same platypus is that they are both oviparous and mammals. The female echidna lays one egg and carries it in a brood pouch on her belly. And when a cub appears, she feeds him with milk. Milk is secreted by special mammary glands. 100-150 pores open on the body, and the cub simply sucks wool moistened with milk.

Echidna and platypus, in addition to laying eggs, have another common feature - an organ called a cloaca. The intestines, ureters and genital tract open into the cloaca. This is where the single-pass squad takes its name (sometimes it is also called the cloacal detachment).

Adult monotremes have no teeth, and body temperature can fluctuate considerably. In this they are similar to reptiles. But still, these amazing animals are considered mammals according to two most important features: the presence of mammary glands and hairline. Interestingly, both the platypus and the echidna are voiceless animals, they simply do not have vocal cords.

At first glance, the echidna resembles a large hedgehog or a small porcupine, as its body is covered with quills. But there are no family ties between these animals. Echidna is found in Australia, in the eastern half of the mainland and at its western tip, and on the island of Tasmania, preferring shrub thickets.

In New Guinea, there is a prochidna. It differs from the Australian echidna in having a longer and more curved snout and tall, three-toed limbs, as well as small external ears.

Prochidna looks like a creature from science fiction books

The size of the echidna does not exceed 30 cm. It has very strong paws, and it is able to burrow into the ground very quickly, escaping from the enemy. Another way to protect yourself is to curl up into a prickly ball, just like a hedgehog.

At night, the echidna goes in search of insects and worms. She is not averse to eating termites and ants and is quite capable of ruining an anthill. Despite their apparent clumsiness, echidnas are good swimmers.

During the mating season, females attract the attention of males, and for some time the animals coexist in groups. They move in a chain in search of food and rest together. Then, after mating fights between males, the female chooses the most “strong” cavalier.

A single echidna egg is "hatched" for 10 days in a special bag. To get out of the egg, the tiny cub breaks the shell with the help of a horny bump on the nose. The cub stays in the mother's pouch for about 50 days, until the quills begin to develop.

baby echidna

After that, the mother digs a hole for the cub, in which she leaves him, returning once every few days to feed her with milk. Thus, the young echidna is under the care of its mother until it reaches the age of seven months.

young echidna

Male echidnas have a formidable weapon on their hind legs - sharp bone spikes. And those thorns are poisonous!

Among echidnas there are also albinos

In general, despite its small size, the echidna is a very strong animal. If she clings to something with her clawed paws, it is difficult to tear her off. And there are few hunters to do it.

Echidna covered with red clay (digging a hole)

Predators introduced by humans into their habitats have a negative impact on the distribution and abundance of echidnas. The reduction of traditional habitats is also a great danger, in connection with which all species of the genus prochidna are recognized as endangered.

The echidna leads a secretive life and has not yet been sufficiently studied. In captivity, life expectancy is about 20 years.

The echidna is an oviparous mammal from the family Tachyglossidae of the order Monotremata (single passers). It is characterized by a stocky body that is covered with coarse hair and quills, short legs with heavily clawed toes, a rudimentary tail, and a toothless jaw with a long and sticky tongue.

photo: Wayne Butterworth

It is often thought that the echidna is related to the porcupine because of their superficial resemblance. The echidna's diet consists mainly of ants and termites, and very rarely it eats other insects and small animals. They live in New Guinea and Australia (including the island of Tasmania). The size of the territory that the echidna occupies directly depends on the amount of food.

photo: Brickwielder

Despite its very dangerous spines, the echidna is prey to a variety of birds and mammals such as foxes, wild dogs and Tasmanian devils and thus occupies an appropriate place in the food chain. In addition, indigenous peoples and early European settlers used echidnas as a food source. They also fight ants and termites.

photo: Charlie Price

Echidnas are monotremes, which means they are one of the three major divisions of mammals. The remaining two groups, marsupials and placentals, give birth to live young. The physiological difference between monotremes and other mammals is that their reproductive, urinary and other systems are in the same canal, the cloaca. Other female mammals have separate openings for reproduction, urination, and defecation. Like other mammals, echidnas are warm-blooded, with a high metabolic rate (though not as high as others).

photo:Laurence Barnes

The elongated and thin muzzle of the echidna has the functions of both the oral cavity and the nose. With the help of their strong limbs and large claws, they easily dig the ground in search of food, and with their tongue they collect prey.

photo:Georgie Brooke

The female echidna lays one soft-shelled egg twenty-two days after mating and stores it directly in her pouch. This incubation takes ten days. The baby stays in the mother's pouch for 45-50 days, during which time it begins to develop spines.

Tachyglossus aculeatus (Shaw, )

History of study

The Australian echidna was first described in 1792 by the English zoologist George Shaw (who described the platypus a few years later). The show gave her a name Myrmecophaga aculeata, mistakenly classifying this strange long-nosed animal caught on an anthill as an anteater. Ten years later, anatomist Edward Home discovered a common feature in echidna and platypus - the cloaca, into which the intestines, ureters and genital tract open. Based on this feature, the detachment of monotremes was singled out.

Echidna successively changed several more names - Ornithorhynchus hystrix, Echidna hystrix, Echidna aculeate until I got the current - Tachyglossus aculeatus. Its generic name in Greek means "quick language"; specific - "prickly".

Appearance and physiology

The Australian echidna is smaller than the prochidna: its usual length is 30-45 cm, weight is from 2.5 to 5 kg. The Tasmanian subspecies is somewhat larger - up to 53 cm. The head of the echidna is covered with coarse hair; the neck is short, almost invisible from the outside. The auricles are not visible. The muzzle of the echidna is elongated into a narrow "beak" 75 mm long, straight or slightly curved. It is an adaptation to searching for prey in narrow crevices and holes, from where the echidna gets it with its long sticky tongue. The mouth opening at the end of the beak is toothless and very small; it does not open wider than 5 mm. Like the platypus, the "beak" of the echidna is richly innervated. Its skin contains both mechanoreceptors and special electroreceptor cells; with their help, the echidna picks up weak fluctuations in the electric field that occur when small animals move. Not a single mammal, apart from echidnas and platypuses, has had such an electrolocation organ.

Echidna leads a solitary lifestyle (with the exception of the mating season). This is not a territorial animal - echidnas encountered simply ignore each other; not satisfied with permanent burrows and nests. For rest, the echidna settles in any convenient place - under the roots, stones, in the hollows of fallen trees. The echidna runs badly. Its main defense is thorns; a disturbed echidna rolls up into a ball, like a hedgehog, and if it has time, it partially burrows into the ground, exposing its back to the enemy with raised needles. It is very difficult to pull the echidna out of the dug hole, because it strongly rests on its paws and needles. Among the predators that prey on echidnas are Tasmanian devils, as well as cats, foxes and dogs introduced by people. Humans rarely pursue her, as the skin of the echidna is of little value and the meat is not particularly tasty. The sounds that an alarmed echidna makes are reminiscent of soft grunts.

One of the largest fleas is found on echidnas, Bradiopsylla echidnae, which is up to 4 mm long.

reproduction

Echidnas live so secretly that the features of their mating behavior and reproduction were published only in 2003, after 12 years of field observations. It turned out that during the courtship period, which lasts from May to September (in different parts of the range, the time of its onset varies), these animals are kept in groups consisting of a female and several males. Both females and males at this time emit a strong musky smell, allowing them to find each other. The group feeds and rests together; when crossing, echidnas follow in single file, forming a "train" or caravan. Ahead is a female, followed by males, which can be 7-10. Courtship lasts up to four weeks. When the female is ready to mate, she lies down, and the males begin to circle around her, throwing clods of earth aside. After some time, a real trench 18-25 cm deep forms around the female. The males violently push each other, pushing them out of the trench until one victorious male remains inside the ring. If there was only one male, the trench is straight. Mating (on the side) lasts about an hour.

Pregnancy lasts 21-28 days. The female builds a brood burrow, a warm, dry chamber often dug under an empty anthill, termite mound, or even under a pile of garden debris next to human habitation. Usually in the clutch there is one leathery egg with a diameter of 13-17 mm and weighing only 1.5 g. For a long time it remained a mystery how the echidna moves the egg from the cloaca to the brood pouch - its mouth is too small for this, and its paws are clumsy. Presumably, postponing it, the echidna deftly curls up into a ball; while the skin on the abdomen forms a fold that releases a sticky fluid. As it freezes, it glues the egg that has rolled onto its stomach and at the same time shapes the bag.

After 10 days, a tiny cub hatches - puggle: it is 15 mm long and weighs only 0.4-0.5 g. When hatching, the puggle breaks the egg shell with the help of a horny bump on the nose, an analogue of the egg tooth of birds and reptiles. The eyes of a newborn echidna are hidden under the skin, and the hind legs are practically not developed. But the front paws already have well-defined fingers. With their help, the newborn moves from the back of the bag to the front in about 4 hours, where there is a special area of ​​​​skin called the milky field, or areola. In this area, 100-150 pores of the mammary glands open; each pore is provided with a modified hair. When the cub squeezes these hairs with his mouth, milk enters his stomach. The high iron content gives echidna milk its pink color.

Echidnas do well in captivity, but do not breed. Only five zoos managed to get the offspring of the Australian echidna, but in no case did the young grow to adulthood.