The 2022 Kangaroo Valley Annual Echidna Count starts on 12 September
The Kangaroo Valley Environment Group is running this year’s Echidna Count in the week of 12 to 18 September.
Everyone in Kangaroo Valley during this week is invited to upload photos or sightings of echidnas into the citizen science website called iNaturalist. These observations will then collect in the 2022 Kangaroo Valley Echidna Count project at https://inaturalist.ala.org.au/projects/2022-kangaroo-valley-annual-echidna-count.
The Annual Echidna Counts are intended to ensure that we will notice if our local echidna population starts to decline in any year, so that the causes can be investigated.
Echidnas are extraordinary animals. They and their cousin, the platypus, are believed to be the oldest mammal species on the planet, at nearly 200 million years old. In Kangaroo Valley we are lucky to have both.
Echidnas are not only fascinating, due to being egg-laying mammals, but they also have many intriguing traits. Their physiology is very sophisticated.
Echidnas do not have a permanent pouch, but will form a pouch-like fold of skin on their belly when preparing to lay an egg. The mammary glands swell to form the lips of the pouch along the lateral muscles of the stomach and these support the egg during incubation, and then support the hatched young, called a puggle, until it is old enough to be left alone in a burrow or under vegetation, which unfortunately is sometimes under a burn pile.
After depositing their puggle in a safe place, the mother will go long distances looking for food, and it can be days – usually less than four – before she returns to feed the puggle.
When they feed their young, they excrete milk over two small circular patches of skin which the puggle drinks by rubbing its mouth and tongue over the skin.
Echidnas are thought to be solitary; however, many observers have seen them in close proximity with each other, especially mothers and their puggles meeting to feed under bushes, and other echidnas who may not be related are sometimes a short distance from each other.
They also form chains of male echidnas called ‘echidna trains’, in which a number of male echidnas follow a female echidna when she is fertile. The formation of males is often nose to tail behind the female for days until she chooses one of the males with which to mate.
It is not possible to determine the gender of an echidna when it is alive, because their genitals are located inside their cloaca, and their testes are located internally. Their penis is not used for urination, and is only outside the body for mating.
Echidnas have interesting chromosomes. Where humans have two sex chromosomes and each sperm carries one sex chromosome (X or Y), the female echidnas have ten sex chromosomes and male echidnas have nine, and each sperm carries a combination of sex chromosomes. What this means is yet to be determined.
Echidnas can put themselves into a torpor to save energy, with body temperature dropping from 31ºC to as low as 4ºC, and their breathing rate has been observed to have dropped in one echidna to as low as one breath in two hours. So never assume that a cool echidna which does not appear to be breathing is dead. It may just have put itself into a torpor for a while. The torpors do not appear to be seasonal or in response to anything in particular.
Their hind feet face backwards, which must have some advantage for them, perhaps stopping them from falling backwards if they are standing upright reaching for insects above them. Echidnas eat ticks and spiders as well as ants and termites!
Echidnas are animals of intense international interest and we can make sure that they thrive in the valley.
To participate in this project there are three ways of contributing your sightings:
- Download the iNaturalist app to your smart phone or tablet, to record sightings of echidnas in the valley during that week.
- For people who do not have a smart phone, or whose phones are not new enough to download the iNaturalist app, sightings can be entered from a computer by going to the iNaturalist website at https://inaturalist.ala.org.au/.
- For anyone for whom this proves difficult, please forward entries to this email address: ckswatson@gmail.com, and the sighting will be added to the count.
You can view the project results at https://inaturalist.ala.org.au/projects/2022-kangaroo-valley-annual-echidna-count.
The iNaturalist app is useful for entering observations, but iNaturalist has many more features when looked at through the internet than through the app. It is a form of social media in which discussions about the species can take place, and it is well worth browsing the iNaturalist website through the internet.
Echidnas are shy creatures, so please approach them quietly and do not interfere with their activity or movement.
Echidnas often shelter under thick shrubs, logs and, unfortunately, also under burn piles because burn piles resemble their natural habitat. If the burn pile does not have to be burnt it is a nice shelter to leave for the echidnas, and for the bandicoots and goannas and other creatures who set up home in burn piles. The pile will break down naturally with time.
Anyone interested in increasing the habitat for echidnas on their properties can:
- preserve ground cover of logs, leaf litter and ground vegetation cover
- preserve large living and dead trees, understorey trees and shrubs
- avoid dismantling areas of surface rock
- replant trees, native shrubs and dense understorey foliage and ground covers
- encourage the natural regeneration of trees, understorey trees and shrubs
- control feral predators such as foxes and cats
- rest areas of native vegetation from grazing
- take care with hazard reduction burns
- drive at a speed at which you can see and stop when an echidna is crossing the road.
ABC Iview has a beautifully filmed program on echidna and platypus in the Australia Remastered series, which can be watched here: https://iview.abc.net.au/video/DO1847H006S00.
An interesting talk by echidna researcher Dr Peggy Rismiller can be found here: https://youtu.be/QqUPzN50pSc, and she wrote an interesting book called The Echidna: Australia’s enigma.
And the Adelaide University is keen to have echidna scats sent to them for analysis of echidnas’ diet, health and stress levels. Information can be found at their Echidna CSI project in iNaturalist here: https://inaturalist.ala.org.au/projects/echidna-csi/journal.
Enjoy the count in September.
Kate Watson
Kangaroo Valley Environment Group
photo credit: Taronga Zoo
