Echidnas

Echidnas are my favourite land animal in Australia. I've yet to decide if the kookaburra or the pelican take first place for the sky, but cuttlefish definitely take the wet cake.

Is it a hedgehog? Noooo. This bad boy is a monotreme, along the same lines as a platypus... both freaks of nature to those of us the 21st century. These guys are mammals that lay eggs. Freakishly cool.

Here's a couple of echidnas at the zoo:


We saw an echidna in South Australia, on Kangaroo Island, and my dad got out for a good photo. I need to get that photo off of dad.

In the meantime, here's some information about how echidnas mate:

• The female starts cruising down the street
• Males smell that sexy female echidna and follow
• The female continues until she has a long line of contenders
• She leads the train into an open area and walks in a circle repeatedly to form a ring
• The female goes to the centre of the ring and digs in so that only her backside is exposed.
• The males enter a steel cage match
• Each male tries to push the rest out of the circle
• The male remaining crawls into the hole with the female
• And we get baby echidnas