I just knew I was going to see an echidna when we went out for our hike. What I didn’t know was that I was going to see two things that made me say, actually out loud this time, what on earth?!
Echidnas are shy animals. Initially. Once you’ve sat quietly for long enough, they generally can’t resist the urge to start either eating or heading back off in the direction that they were going prior to being rudely interrupted.
Matt heard the echidna before he saw it, which is usually the way that these things go. By the time I got there, it was curled up, spines on display. You know, the usual defence position that echidnas take. And so we waited. And it waited. And finally it couldn’t wait any longer and the sun was just too good to refuse. It shuffled a bit and then its legs sprang out straight behind it, not unlike how my dogs often lie down. It was sun basking!
It’s not overly uncommon to see echidnas sun basking in captivity. They have fur-covered stomachs and so lying on warm sand or dirt would feel pretty great. But it's unusual to see in the wild and this one was happy enough to snooze and sun bask even though we were nearby. Thanks for the trust, Mr Echidna.
And Mr is the correct term here, which I didn’t realise until after the fact. As he was stretching out his legs and showing off his incredible claws – all the better to dig and scratch apart termite mounds and rotten wood with – I took a couple of photos. When I got home I noticed something sticking out from the hind leg and had to rummage through my brain a bit to try and work out what it was.
Turns out I was looking at the tarsal spur of the male echidna. Their fellow monotremes, the platypus, also have this spur on the hind leg of males except, in that case, it’s venomous! That’s right, platypus use their spur during breeding season to hurt a competitor, to cause pain and swelling. It’s believed that the echidna spur also used to contain venom but now the waxy secretion is used to communicate during breeding.
So, while I may have known that I was totally going to see an echidna, I had no idea just how special an encounter it would turn out to be.
