Echidna

“ They are of large size, and of a beautiful bluish green colour.
Among other extraordinary animals furnished to the naturalists in this interesting country, is the Echidna, or “native porcupine,” the Nickobejan and Jannocumbine of the natives. It inhabits mountain ranges, burrowing with extraordinary facility; and at this season (December) produces its young. It forms a link between Hystrix and Myrmecophaga, differing but little in external characters from the genera Manis and Myrmecophaga; a new genus has been therefore formed for it—Echidna, in the order Edentata, tribe Monotrema. ”

“ The opening of the mouth is small, and from it the echidna puts forth its long slender tongue, lubricated with a viscous secretion, by means of which it seizes the ants and other insects on which it feeds. It has no teeth. Its legs are short and strong, and form, with its broad feet and large solid nails, powerful burrowing organs. In common with the other monotremes, the male echidna has its heel provided with a sharp hollow spur, connected with a secreting gland, and with muscles capable of pressing the secretion from the gland into the spur. ”

“ It is with these strong hind-claws that the earth loosened by the fore-feet is thrown out from ants’ nests and the burrow. Like the porcupine, which is also a nocturnal and a burrowing creature, the echidna has its back protected with an array of parti-coloured horny spines mingled with hairs. The degree of development of the spines is, however, subject to great variation; and there is one race in which the hair predominates, and the spines appear only in the midst of the dense brown fur. Like the platypus, the echidna has no external ears. ”

“ Naked and blind when first hatched, the young one remains in the pouch till its spines make their appearance, drawing its nutriment from two pores through which the milk flows. When the young echidna has been turned adrift in the world to shift for itself, the maternal breeding-pouch shrivels up, to be re-developed the following year. ”

“ The vast brood of Echidna in mythology expresses the brood of evil in nature. Echidna, daughter of Ge and Tartarus, Earth and Hell—phonetic reappearance of Ahi—is half-serpent, half-woman, with black eyes, fearful and bloodthirsty. She becomes the mother of fire-breathing Typhon, buried beneath the earth by Jove’s lightning when he aspired to scale Olympus; of the Dragon that guarded the Hesperian garden; of the Sphinx which puzzled and devoured; of three-headed Cerberus; of the eagle that preyed on rock-bound Prometheus; of the Nemæan lion which Herakles slew; of Chimæra ”

“ The Echidna, or Australian Hedgehog, although quite as remarkable in internal structure as the Ornithorhynchus, is not so peculiar in external appearance, having very much the aspect of a hedgehog or spiny armadillo. The two species of this genus are very closely allied; one inhabits East and South Australia, the other Tasmania. ”

“ The oldest types of animals in Australia are the ornithorhynchus and the echidna, the 'beast with a bill,' and the 'porcupine ant-eater' of popular natural history. These curious creatures, genuine living fossils, occupy in some respects an intermediate place between the mammals on the one hand and the birds and lizards on the other. The echidna has no teeth, and a very bird-like skull and body; the ornithorhynchus has a bill like a duck's, webbed feet, and a great many quaint anatomical peculiarities which closely ally it to the birds and reptiles. ”

“ No fossil remains of any great age have been found to prove that these animals are of distant antiquity. We cannot tell in what age they entered into existence. No remains of types connecting them with lower vertebrates on the one hand, or higher mammals on the other, have been discovered. The only fossil portion of an echidna that has been thus far secured is a shoulder-bone, found in a bed of bones belonging to extinct species of marsupial, or pouched animals. This shoulder-bone indicated an animal larger than any living echidna. ”

“ Monotremata. In Echidna the carpus is broad, the scaphoid and lunar are united and there is no centrale. The pisiform is large and several other sesamoid bones occur. Each of the five digits is terminated by a large ungual phalanx. In Ornithorhynchus the manus is more slender, but the general arrangement is the same as in Echidna.
Marsupialia. The carpus has no centrale and the lunar is generally small or absent. Five digits are almost always present. In Choeropus however the only two functional digits are the second and third, which have very long closely apposed metacarpals ”

“ These egg-laying mammals show relationship towards the reptiles both in structure and in methods of reproduction.
A Pliocene species of Ornithorhynchus (O. maximus) has been recorded from the Deep-leads of Gulgong, « 287 » New South Wales, and the same beds have yielded the remains of Echidna (Proechidna) robusta. Remains of another species, Echidna, (P.) oweni, have been described from the Pleistocene Cave-breccias of the Wellington Valley Caves, New South Wales; and Ornithorhynchus agilis is found in deposits of similar age in Queensland. ”

“ The premaxillae show traces of the same divergence followed by convergence of their ends that is seen in the Platypus. There are only sixteen pairs of ribs, and either three or four lumbar vertebrae. Echidna has no trace of teeth, and there are no horny pads which take their place; the mouth is as edentulous as in the true American Anteaters. The brain (Fig. 53) is marked by sulci, contrary to what we find in Ornithorhynchus. The genus has been divided into three species, but it is doubtful whether more than one can be allowed, which ranges from Australia through the Papuan region. ”

“ When the young has attained a certain size, the mother removes it from the pouch, but takes it in from time to time to suckle it. When on her nightly rambles the young one is left in a burrow dug for the purpose. Dr. Semon was able, from his own observations, to substantiate this act of intelligence on the part of the Echidna. It is well known that the temperature of the Monotremes is less than that of higher mammals ”

“ The absence of the corpus callosum is one of the principal features separating the Monotremes from other mammals.
The Monotremata are represented to-day by two types, Ornithorhynchus and Echidna, which are no doubt worthy of being placed in separate families. Fossil remains of the group (apart from the problematical Multituberculata) are only known from Pleistocene times in Australia, and consist of the bones of a large species of Echidna, and some fragments of Ornithorhynchus, indicating a smaller animal than the living Platypus. ”

“ The Snakes of South Africa, as of Europe, lie concealed in their holes in a torpid state during the colder part of the year. It is, therefore, only in the hottest summer months that the traveller is exposed to the danger of being bitten." Dr. Gray refers doubtfully to this genus both the Echidna inornata of Sir A. Smith, and the E. mauritanica of Duméril and Bibron, from Algeria; likewise a Peruvian species named Echidna ocellata by Tschudi, which is the only known instance of a member of this family inhabiting the New World. ”

“ But in natural history, when we have to deal with members of different groups, externals count for very little, and all depends upon internal organisation. In the latter respect the echidnas, for there is more than one species, resemble in all essential features the duckbill, as they do in laying hard-shelled eggs, from which the young are eventually hatched. The single egg of the echidna, in place of being laid in a burrow, is, however, carried about by the female in a pouch developed for the purpose on the under side of her body shortly before the egg is laid ”

“ The male animal is in addition armed on the hind feet with a peculiar supplementary spur, which is, however, still more conspicuously developed in the platypus.
Three distinct species of the echidna are recognised by zoologists. The one peculiar to the cooler climate of Tasmania is remarkable for its more slender spines, the much greater abundance of the long bristle-like hairs, and the thickness of the seal-brown under-fur, as compared with the typical Australian form. In North-west New Guinea the largest and most aberrant form is met with. ”

“ While there is but one species of true Echidna, a New Guinea species must clearly be referred to a distinct genus Proechidna. [58] This animal is to be distinguished by the fact that there are usually but three toes on each foot. But there are copious rudiments of the other phalanges, upon which claws are sometimes developed. The beak is curved downwards, and the back is rather arched; the whole animal has the most singular likeness to an Elephant! The ribs are increased by one pair, and there are four lumbar vertebrae. ”

“ In a younger stage of their development, however, the young are carried in a temporary abdominal pouch, to which they are transferred after hatching, and into which open the mammary glands. The echidnas are exceedingly restless in confinement, and constantly endeavour by burrowing to effect their escape. ”

“ In the Monotremata (in Echidna) there is a deep fold of the skin which lodges the unhatched egg, and into which the mammary glands open, one on either side. This structure is only periodically developed, and arises from two rudiments, one corresponding to each mammary area; but in the female with eggs or young there is but a single deep depression, which occupies the same region of the body as the marsupial pouch of the Marsupials. [6] It is usually held that this structure is not of precisely the same morphological value as the pouch of the Marsupial ”

“ The habits of the echidna are nocturnal. It generally sleeps most of the day, and comes out at dark to prowl for insects. We might at first consider this strange conduct, as the insects on which it feeds fly or crawl about during the day and hide by night. ”

“ J.Backhouse, `Narrative of a Visit to the Australian Colonies,' p. 89:
"The Porcupine of this land, Echidna hystrix, is a squat species of ant-eater, with short quills among its hair: it conceals itself in the day time among dead timber in the hilly forests."
1851. `Papers and Proceedings of the Royal Society of Van Diemen's Land,' vol. i. p. 178:
"Mr. Milligan mentioned that one of the Aborigines of Tasmania reports having often discovered the nest of the Echidna Setosa, porcupine or ant eater, of the colony ”

“ The first sub-class is so called from the terminal arrangement of the abdominal viscera being the same as that of Birds and Reptiles. The Ornithorhynchus and Echidna are the only representatives of the Ornithodelphia, and are limited to Australia and Tasmania. They seem to be the survivors of a class once much larger, and now extinct. ”

“ In order to enable them to procure with facility their food of ants and their larvae, echidnas are provided with very large glands, discharging into the mouth the viscid secretion which causes the ants to adhere to the long worm-like tongue when thrust into a mass of these insects, after being exposed by the digging powers of the claws of the echidna's limbs. ”

“ There are invariably two entrances to these burrows, the one being under water, and the other usually opening into a tangle of brushwood at some little distance from the water's edge. As many as from one to four eggs and young may be produced at a time, but two is the more general number. From the first it would appear that the eggs and young are deposited and nursed in the nest, not being retained or carried about in a pouch, as observed of the echidna. ”

“ The duckbill and the echidna afford an excellent example of the diversity of appearance produced in animals more or less nearly related to each other by specialisation and adaptation to totally distinct modes of life. In the duckbill the specialisation and adaptation are for an aquatic existence; in the echidna they are for a burrowing, terrestrial life and a diet of ants. ”

“ Liberated amidst their normal surroundings, they would walk leisurely from one ant-hill to another, tearing down the side of it with their powerful front claws, and appropriating its living contents with the greatest relish. It was observed, however, in this connection that the echidna paid attention entirely to the succulent white larvæ and pupal phases of the insects with which the inner chambers of the ant-hills are customarily crowded, and that adult ants, as they abounded in the tracts near at hand or elsewhere, were altogether neglected. ”

“ The porcupine, a rodent in no way related to the hedgehog, and the Australian echidna, allied to the ornithorhynchus, have precisely similar spines. "The fact is, almost all surviving members of very low and early groups are extremely likely to have such peculiar spiny or armor-plated bodies, because only those which happened to be so protected have managed to escape the persistent attention of a million generations of vermin-eating carnivores. ”

“ Semon found that the range of variation of temperature in the Echidna was as much as 13 degrees or more. It is thus intermediate between the "poikilothermal" reptiles and the "homoeothermal" mammals.
Fam. 2. Ornithorhynchidae.—There is no need to attempt to define this family, since it contains but one genus Ornithorhynchus, with but one species, O. anatinus. The general aspect of the animal is well known. It is covered with dense fur of a blackish brown colour; the limbs are short and five-toed, the toes being webbed. The tail is longish and broad, being flattened from above downwards. ”