Short-beaked echidna

The short-beaked echidna is a small, round animal covered in sharp spines, a bit like a hedgehog or a little walking pincushion. It lives across Australia and in New Guinea, and you can find it in forests, grasslands, and even dry deserts. It shuffles along the ground with a funny waddle, sniffing for its next meal.

The echidna is a monotreme, which means it is a very rare kind of mammal that lays eggs. A mother echidna lays one soft, leathery egg about the size of a grape and tucks it into a cosy pouch on her belly. When the tiny baby hatches, it is called a puggle, and it drinks its mother's milk to grow big and strong.

An echidna loves to eat ants and termites. It has a long snout and an even longer sticky tongue that darts in and out super fast to catch its dinner. Echidnas do not have teeth, so they mash up their food between hard pads inside their mouth. Their strong claws are perfect for digging open an ant nest.

Those spines are the echidna's clever way of staying safe. If something startles it, the echidna can tuck in its legs and curl into a prickly ball, or dig straight down into the ground so only its spikes are showing. Most animals decide a spiky echidna is far too tricky to bother.

Short-beaked echidnas are found in lots of places and are doing well in the wild. They are quiet, gentle diggers who help the soil by turning it over as they search for food. The main thing that worries them is busy roads, so people watch out for echidnas crossing and give these spiky little travellers a safe path.