THE SPIKY EGG-LAYER

❃ Wandering across the forests, grasslands, and dry landscapes of Australia and New Guinea, the echidna looks like a creature assembled from several different worlds. Its compact body is covered in coarse fur and sharp keratin spines, while a long, sensitive snout projects from its small head and stout limbs end in powerful digging claws. Yet beneath this unusual appearance is one of the world's few surviving monotremes — mammals that lay eggs rather than giving birth to live young.

❃ That remarkable snout is more than a nose: it can detect the faint electrical signals produced by prey hidden beneath soil and leaf litter. Once an echidna locates ants, termites, or other invertebrates, its strong claws tear open nests, rotting logs, or earth, and a long sticky tongue rapidly laps up the exposed meal. With no teeth, the echidna instead relies on specialized structures inside its mouth to grind food before swallowing — an extraordinary feeding system for a land-dwelling mammal.

❃ Usually solitary and remarkably adaptable, echidnas can inhabit environments ranging from forests and alpine regions to deserts and semi-arid country. When threatened, they can curl into a ball, hiding their vulnerable face and limbs beneath a defensive layer of spines, or disappear into the soil with powerful digging strokes. Ancient in lineage yet perfectly equipped for life on the ground, the echidna is a living reminder that some of nature's strangest mammals survived by taking an entirely different path.