Ten Things I Like About... Podcast

Slime Mold

Summary: Yuck! What is that goopy, gross pile of snot?! It’s Slime Mold! Join Kiersten as she reveals slime mold.
 
Show Notes: 
“Introduction to the Slime Molds” UC Berkeley
“What is Slime Mold?” By Stephen C. George. Discover Magazine, Apr 21, 2023. https://www.discovermagazine.com
“Slime Molds” by Dr. Sharon M. Douglas, Department of Plant Pathology and Ecology, The Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station. https://portal.ct.gov
Music written and performed by Katherine Camp

World Pangolin Day

Today is World Pangolin Day! To celebrate this amazing but highly endangered animal, we’re reposting the first episode of our series on pangolins. Please enjoy and go back and listen to the rest of the series to learn more about the pangolin! 
 
Originally Aired:  9/14/2022
 
Pangolin Scales
Summary: Join Kiersten as she talks about her first favorite thing about pangolins, their scales! This episode is the first of ten about the amazing pangolin.
 
Show Notes: 
References for this episode - The Encyclopedia of Mammals edited by Dr. David Macdonald
www.savepangolins.org
https://www.discoverwildlife.com/animal-facts/mammals/facts-about-pangolins
Pangolin Conservation Organizations: 
Rare and Endangered Species Trust - www.restnamibia.org
Save Vietnam’s Wildlife - www.svw.vn

Echidna: Conservation

Episode 65: Echidna: Conservation
Summary: What does the future of the echidna look like? Join Kiersten as she discusses echidna conservation
 
For my hearing impaired listeners, a complete transcript of this podcast follows the show notes on Podbean
Show Notes:
Short-beaked Echidna (Tachyglossus aculeates) Fact Sheet: Population and Conservation Status, San Diego Wildlife Alliance Library. https://iecl.libguides.com
“The Long-beaked Echidna: can we save the earth’s oldest living mammal?”, by Andrew L. Mack, 26 October 2015, Mongabay. https://news.mongabay.com
EchidnaCSI: https://www.adelaide.edu.au/environment/research/citizen-science/echidna-csi/echidna-research-conservation
echidnacsi@adelaide.edu.au
Expedition Cyclops: https://www.expeditioncyclops.org/echidna
Music written and performed by Katherine Camp
 
Transcript 
(Piano music plays)
Kiersten - This is Ten Things I Like About…a ten minute, ten episode podcast about unknown or misunderstood wildlife.
(Piano music stops)
Welcome to Ten Things I Like About… I’m Kiersten, your host, and this is a podcast about misunderstood or unknown creatures in nature. Some we’ll find right out side our doors and some are continents away but all are fascinating. 
This podcast will focus ten, ten minute episodes on different animals and their amazing characteristics. Please join me on this extraordinary journey, you won’t regret it.
This is the last episode of echidnas, and I have to say I’m sorry to see them go. They have been such an interesting animal to talk about. And as usual the last episode is all about the conservation work being done to ensure their continued survival. 
The short-beaked echidna is the most wide spread native mammal in Australia and is protected on the continent but that doesn’t mean they aren’t feeling the strain of our changing planet. Loss of habitat, loss of food resources, over-hunting, and problems encountered due to changing temperatures are problems all species of echidnas face. Another man-made problem threatening echidnas is feral dogs. They have no problems tracking echidnas and making a meal of them.
Of our four species of echidnas, the short-beaked echidna is doing the best conservation wise. Overall, their populations are stable in the area that have been studied. An estimate made in 2017 says 5 to 50 million individual short-beaked echidnas may live in Australia. They are given a Least Concern status by the IUCN.
The long-beaked echidnas are a different story.
Over hunting of the long-beaked echidna is problematic. Since the 1960’s the long-beaked echidna has experienced an 80% loss of population. All long-beaked echindas, which is three out of the four species of echidna, are  considered critically endangered by the IUCN. 
Here’s where the echidna and human stories twine together in a plicated braid. Indigenous peoples of the New Guinea are relied on echidnas and tree kangaroos as food sources. These two animals are the largest mammals native to this area. Back when human numbers were low, this wasn’t a problem. A few echidna were hunted for meat and the populations were allowed to replenish keeping up with the small amount taken for hunting. 
In 2015, a study done estimating the hunting of long-beaked echidna by Indigenous peoples found that in seven months hunters from 33 clans in two tribes killed and consumed 16 long-beaked echidnas. It doesn’t sound like a lot but, that is more than 25% of all the known specimens in the world ever collected. There are over 800 tribes in Papua New Guinea and thousands of clans with a taste for the echidna. Modern technology and dogs have made hunting for them even easier. It’s a fine line here with conservation efforts because we don’t want to take away from the importance of preserving indigenous peoples way of life, but this activity is also wiping out an animal that is older than human history. Researchers and educators must tread carefully but quickly to prevent the extinction of this animal.
The biggest problem here is that the tribes are like separate countries. They all have different languages and different ways of life, so setting aside an area to protect the echidna is simply not possible. You have to approach each group of people and talk to the individually and explain the problems that the echidna faces. It can be done but it relies on time the long-beaked echidnas may not have left. But conservationists have not given up hope.
What is being done to ensure the survival of this animal that has lived on this planet longer than any other mammal? 
Australia has laws in place that protect echidnas from exploitation and has set aside wild place as refuges for them, as well as other native wildlife. Researchers continue to study all species of echidna to learn about how they live and what they rely on to survive. With this information new regulations can be crafted to protect the animal itself and the resources they need to survive. 
This is the most difficult area of conservation though, because most species are nocturnal and live in dense forest ares. This makes it very difficult to find and observe them. The ones that live in more open area live high up in altitude which also makes it difficult for us to find and follow them. 
In Papua New Guinea individual landowners have begun to work with conservationist by agreeing to not hunt echidnas on their land. The Hogave Conservation Area was established as a no-hunting zone thirty years ago by a tribal chief in the area. Elsewhere in Papua New Guinea conservation groups are working locally with individuals to spread the word about echidna populations and hope for their survival there has greatly improved. 
On a happy note, Sir David’s long-beaked echidna, thought to be extinction for over 60 years was rediscovered in 2023. An expedition to the Cyclops Mountains in Indonesia had high hopes in finding this long lost echidna. They had heard rumors and received reports from local Indigenous people that echidna still roamed the region, but not hard evidence had surfaced. In 2023, one last effort was made by the University of Oxford to determine if the stories where true. And they did it! They captured film footage of the animal proving this species of long-beaked echidna is still alive today! It leaves you with hope that the other species may survive against all odds as well.
For my listeners in Australia, I’m not sure I have any listeners in Austraila, I hope I do, and other areas where echidnas are found there is a citizen science project you can join to help researchers at the University of Adelaide collect important information about echidnas. The program is called EchidnaCSI and anyone can join! CSI stand for Conservation Science Initiative and you can contact the university by emailing echidnacsi@adelaide.edu.au. I’ll post this link in my show notes for this episode.
For those of you outside Australia that want to help echidnas, do what I’m doing, get the word out there about these amazing animals. The more people know about these animals they more they will care and that is the best step to helping them survive.
You can also contribute to Expedition Cyclops. Now that we have definitive proof that Sir David’s long-beaked echidna still lives, more research is needed to ensure their continued survival. I’ll post a link to Expedition Cyclops in my show notes.
I’m going to end on a hopeful note for the echidna because it’s my tenth favorite thing about this legendary animal. Thank you so much for joining me for my series on echidnas.
If you're enjoying this podcast please recommend me to friends and family and take a moment to give me a rating on whatever platform your listening. It will help me reach more listeners and give the animals I talk about an even better chance at change. 
 
I’ll be taking a break after this series but I’ll be back in March of 2024 with brand new episodes of Ten Things I Like About.…     
 
(Piano Music plays) 
This has been an episode of Ten Things I like About with Kiersten and Company. Original music written and performed by Katherine Camp, piano extraordinaire.

Echidnas: Electro-Senses

Summary: Some echidna senses don’t make much sense, but they’re really cool! Join Kiersten as she discusses echidna senses.
 
For my hearing impaired listeners, a complete transcript of this podcast follows the show notes on Podbean
 
“Functional Diversity and Evolution of Bitter Taste Receptors in Egg-Laying Mammals,” by Akihito Itoigawa, Akashi Hayakawa, Yang Zhou, Adrian D. Manning, Goujie Zhang, Frank Grutzner, Hire Imai. Molecular Biology and Evolution, Volume 39, Issue 6, June 2022. https://doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msac107
“Distortion product otoacoustic emission and auditory brainstem responses in the echidna(Tachyglossus aculeatus),” by D M Mills and R K Shepard. J Assoc Res Otolaryngol. 2001 Jun; 2(2): 130-46.
“Color vision evolution in egg-laying mammals: insights from visual photoreceptors and daily activities of Australian echidnas,” by Shiina Sakamoto, Yuka Matsushita, Akihiro Itoigawa, Takumi Ezawa, Takeshi Fujitani, Kenichiro Takakura, Yang Zhou, Goujie Zhang, Frank Grutzner, Shoji Kawamura, and Akashi Hayakawa. Zoological Letters, 2024; 10: 2. 
 Music written and performed by Katherine Camp
 
Transcript 
(Piano music plays)
Kiersten - This is Ten Things I Like About…a ten minute, ten episode podcast about unknown or misunderstood wildlife.
(Piano music stops)
Welcome to Ten Things I Like About… I’m Kiersten, your host, and this is a podcast about misunderstood or unknown creatures in nature. Some we’ll find right out side our doors and some are continents away but all are fascinating. 
This podcast will focus ten, ten minute episodes on different animals and their amazing characteristics. Please join me on this extraordinary journey, you won’t regret it.
This episode continues echidnas and the ninth thing I like about these incredible animals is their senses. Just like most mammals echidnas have eyes, ears, a nose, and a tongue which covers four of the five senses. We know they use their eyes to see, their ears to hear, and their nose to smell and we’re going to talk about all of these things in this episode. Whether they use their tongue to taste, I’m not sure, but we’ll try and find out an answer. I do know they use their nose for more than just smelling. Let’s get started.
We’ll begin with vision. Echidnas are often described as nocturnal, as I said in previous episodes, but some researchers and zookeepers have seen them active during the day. What does this have to do with their vision? Whether an animal is diurnal or nocturnal can, evolutionarily speaking, influence the development of color vision. Not many controlled studies have been done to truly determine the daily behaviors of the echidna, but scientists have been able to determine that echidnas do have some color vision. Since reports say echidnas are active both day and night it does stand to reason they have at least some color vision opsins.
Their distance vision is nothing to write home about. In other words, not great, but they are excellent at discerning shapes. They can distinguish a human shape from other forms, so that means they can probably distinguish other animal and plant forms, as well. They don’t rely on vision too much, but it is helpful during the daylight hours when and if they are active.
Hearing is a sense that many animals with poor vision will depend on to survive. Echidnas are no expiation to this rule. They do have ears with which to hear, but the do not have external pinnae. The fleshly part of the ear that sticks out from the side of the head is called the pinna. We have them, dogs, and cat’s have them, many mammals have them, but not echidnas. They have a large slit behind their eyes, often hidden in their fur and spines. This opening connects to their auditory canal and allows them to hear. 
A study published in 2001, determined that echidna hearing is as sensitive as other mammals such as gerbils and rabbits but it is a much narrower frequency range. They did establish that echidnas have some sort of cochlear amplifier inside the structure of the ear but it is not the same as other mammals. Echidnas can hear frequencies above 20 kHz which is higher than typical bird or reptile hearing but lower than typical mammal hearing. 
Let’s take a quick lick, oh sorry, look at the sense of taste. The echidna has taste buds at the base of the tongue. The presence of taste buds implies that they can taste something. But what can they taste? A study published in 2022, looked at the bitter taste in the echidna. Bitter taste receptors are typically thought to help identify toxic chemicals in plants and invertebrates. This would be very important for an animal that eats invertebrates. This research concluded that echidnas do have just enough bitter taste buds to help keep them safe while foraging for food. More research will need to be done to find out if they have any other taste profiles.  
The nose. This is where we get to the really cool stuff. Echidnas have an excellent sense of smell. Their nose is located at the end of their long snout. They rely on their sense of smell to find food underground. Their keen sense of smell allows them to find termites, ants, earthworms and other soft bodied larvae in the ground. This isn’t unusual or the truly exciting thing about their noses. 
The really cool thing about their noses is that they can sense electrical currents with it. That’s pretty cool. I’m going to read you a paragraph from the Nature Comes Standard website that explains how this works. Quoting from the article entitled E.S.P: Echidna Sensory Perception, “The snout senses vibrations via both electrical and mechanical signals. A prey’s movement creates a vibration that reaches the snout, acting upon a nanoscale column of cells like a combustion engine’s push-rod. The push-rod transfers the signal to a nerve ending, creating an electric signal, and a mechanoreceptor creating a similar sensation as a humans fingertip. This information is processed to sense the presence and motion of prey. Like counting the time delay between a lightning flash and a thunder boom, the echidna can sense a prey’s distance and speed.” End quote. 
That, I think, is quite a cool nose. There are even scientists studying how this works to improve human navigation and develop new methods of scanning objects. I love it when we take the time to learn from Nature.
That’s it for echidna senses, and I have a feeling that you found it just as interesting as I did because it’s my ninth favorite thing about them. 
 
If you're enjoying this podcast please recommend me to friends and family and take a moment to give me a rating on whatever platform your listening. It will help me reach more listeners and give the animals I talk about an even better chance at change. 
 
Join me next week for the final episode about echidnas.    
 
(Piano Music plays) 
This has been an episode of Ten Things I like About with Kiersten and Company. Original music written and performed by Katherine Camp, piano extraordinaire.

Echidna: Dreamers?

Summary: Do echidnas dream? Join Kiersten as she travels into the sleep cycles of the echidna to find out if they dream.
 
For my hearing impaired listeners, a complete transcript of this podcast follows the show notes on Podbean
 
Show Notes: 
“Monotremes and the evolution of rapid eye movement of sleep,” J. M. Siegel, P. R. Manger, R. Nienhuis, H. M. Fahringer, and J. D. Pettigrew. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. London, B (1998) 353, 1147-1157. 
“The Echidna Tachyglossus aculeates Combines REM and Non-REM Aspects in a Single Sleep State: Implications for the Evolution of Sleep,” by J. M. Siegel, P. R. Manger, R. Nienhuis, H. M. Fahringer, and J. D. Pettigrew. The Journal of Neuroscience, May 15, 1996, 16 (10): 3500-3506.
 Music written and performed by Katherine Camp
 
Transcript 
(Piano music plays)
Kiersten - This is Ten Things I Like About…a ten minute, ten episode podcast about unknown or misunderstood wildlife.
(Piano music stops)
Welcome to Ten Things I Like About… I’m Kiersten, your host, and this is a podcast about misunderstood or unknown creatures in nature. Some we’ll find right out side our doors and some are continents away but all are fascinating. 
This podcast will focus ten, ten minute episodes on different animals and their amazing characteristics. Please join me on this extraordinary journey, you won’t regret it.
This episode continues echidnas and the eighth thing I like about this rule breaking mammal is the possibility that they may dream. I’m not kidding listeners, echidnas may actually dream. Let’s dive into this subject by finding out what happens when echidnas sleep.
Discovering what happens when echidnas sleep has been a long a winding path. First, it’s pretty difficult to determine what a hard to find, nocturnal animal is doing when they’re sleeping. So most of the research done involving echidna sleep is done with the short-beaked echidna, Tachyglossus aculeates, because they are more easily found. 
In 1972, a report was published about the electrophysiological study of the short-beaked echidna. They were interested in the waking and sleeping state of the echidna. The way you study that is by recording the electrical impulses created by the brain during different activities. The 1972 study showed that echidnas do not enter REM sleep, the state of sleep in which dreams occur. Echidnas remained in a non-REM sleep the entire time they were unconscious.  
Based on this information, researchers postulated new hypotheses on when sleep developed two sleep stages. Since echidnas are biologically some of the oldest living mammals, some say primitive but I think that word makes them sound unimportant, the stages of sleep they exhibit could have meaningful implications on when mammalian sleep developed two distinct sleep stages.
For years science excepted this result for the 1972 study. There was no reason to question the results. The research was sound and a second study published in 1996 seemed to support these results. The second study actually found that the typical sleep patterns of non-monotreme mammals, which is every mammal except echidnas and platypus, did not match the sleep patterns of the echidna. 
The really interesting result of this study was that they found that echidna sleep resembled both non-REM sleep patterns and REM sleep patterns in the same cycle. This is significant because in the average mammal REM and non-REM sleep happens in separate cycles. Using different methods of judging sleep  and waking activity in the brain, revealed a truth that called for a reevaluation  of the previous results.
Really fascinating! Who knew the sleep patterns of an ancient-lineage mammal could mean so much to modern research? 
With these two studies kind of rubbing against each other, further research was definitely needed. In 1998, a study did look closer at the sleep patterns of the echidna. The previous two studies had used changes in EEG, electromyogram, and eye movement to determine whether the echidna actually experienced REM sleep. These researchers recognized the discrepancies created using these recoding methods and decided to look at the neuronal activity in the brainstem. 
The 1998 study added another layer to the echidna sleep mystery. Using new evaluation methods this study showed that echidnas do experience a sleep state resembling REM sleep in the brainstem, while the forebrain remains in a state resembling non-REM sleep.
One of the questions that arose during this line of study was why do echidnas not show typical signs of REM sleep such as the rapid eye movement that gives this sleep cycle its name. Twitching of various body parts, as well as, eye movement is indicative of REM sleep in many mammalian species, including platypus which is the other extant monotremes on the planet. So why don’t echidnas display twitching muscles during REM?
The scientists in this study thought that might be due to the fact that echidnas sleep in more exposed areas than platypus. The twitching of their spines would be audible and visible to predators, but in the last episode I just talked about how echidnas dig dens into the side of sloped ground. So, I don’t know if I buy that explanation. They may need to go back to the drawing board on that. But this evidence gives them one more hypothesis on when REM sleep developed in mammals. The forebrain aspects of REM sleep may be recent inventions in the mammalian line.
How does any of this relate back to the title of this episode? REM sleep is the sleep cycle when dreaming happens. Research into human sleep patterns shows that dreaming happens during the REM sleep cycle. Mammals that experience REM sleep may also dream. Now the cortex of the brain must be activated during REM sleep to produce dreams, and what we just learned about echidna sleep tells us that their brainstem is involved in their REM sleep. 
So do echidnas dream? They do have a large neocortex compared to other mammalian brains, and I’ve just shown that different routes of research can shed more light on what is actually happening in an animal. Maybe brainstem REM sleep also creates dreams and we just haven’t found evidence of it yet. It’s an intriguing question and I’ll leave you with one more before I end this episode. If echidnas dream, what do they dream about?
Thanks again listeners for following me down the winding path of the echidna. I’m glad you joined me today because my eight favorite thing about them is the possibility that they dream.
 
If you're enjoying this podcast please recommend me to friends and family and take a moment to give me a rating on whatever platform your listening. It will help me reach more listeners and give the animals I talk about an even better chance at change. 
 
Join me next week for another episode about echidnas.    
 
(Piano Music plays) 
This has been an episode of Ten Things I like About with Kiersten and Company. Original music written and performed by Katherine Camp, piano extraordinaire. 

Echidna: Social Structure

Summary: Do echidnas ever get on each others nerves? Join Kiersten as she talks about the social structure of echidnas to find out!
 
For my hearing impaired listeners, a complete transcript of this podcast follows the show notes on Podbean
 
Show Notes: 
Short-beaked Echidna. Bush Heritage Australia, https://www.bushheritage.org.au
Eastern long-beaked echidna, Animalia, https://animlia.bio
“Home Ranges, Movement, and Den Use in Long-beaked Echidnas, Zaglossus bartoni, From Papua New Guinea,” by Muse D. Opiang. Journal of Mammalogy, Volume 90, Issue 2, 14 April 2009, pages 340-346. https://doi.org/10.1644/08-MaMM-A-108.1
Music written and performed by Katherine Camp
 
Transcript 
(Piano music plays)
Kiersten - This is Ten Things I Like About…a ten minute, ten episode podcast about unknown or misunderstood wildlife.
(Piano music stops)
Welcome to Ten Things I Like About… I’m Kiersten, your host, and this is a podcast about misunderstood or unknown creatures in nature. Some we’ll find right out side our doors and some are continents away but all are fascinating. 
This podcast will focus ten, ten minute episodes on different animals and their amazing characteristics. Please join me on this extraordinary journey, you won’t regret it.
This episode continues echidnas and the seventh thing I like about them is their social structure. 
Overall, all species of echidnas are solitary animals. They spend the majority of their lives alone, only coming together during breeding season. Then mothers will remain with the puggles until they are about 7 months old and they are able to leave the den and forage for themselves. Outside of breeding season and puggle-raising duties, echidnas live solitary lives.
We do base this information on what we currently know about this enigmatic creature which, sadly, is not a lot. They are hard to study in the wild because they are typically nocturnal and they often dig dens that they stay in during the day. Researchers haven’t given up and do continue to try and learn as much as we can about their everyday lives. 
A study published in 2009 looked at the home ranges and movement of the eastern long-beaked echidna, Zaglossus bartoni. The study showed that mature adult home ranges did not overlap with each other, but juvenile echidnas occasionally overlapped with female echidna home ranges. It is possible that these juveniles may have been the offspring of the females, but that was not proven.
Home range size was estimated for 11 individual echidnas. Seven were positively identified by sex and 4 were estimated, giving a total of seven females and four males with three juveniles. Researchers strapped telemetry anklets to the subjects to document as many points as possible to estimate home range size. By the end of the research period, home ranges sizes varied from 2.2 hectares to 168.2 hectares. 
If you’re thinking that’s quite a large difference in home range sizes, you’d be right. Let’s look a little closer at these results. The individual with the smallest home range size only had 4 points of reference, so we’d probably throw that one out because of lack of data. The largest home range of 168.2 hectares was a juvenile with 43 points of reference, so most likely this is a good estimate of the home range. Because it’s a juvenile, the researchers believe that it was still trying to decide on a home range and that’s why it was wandering so far and wide. Most likely this is not indicative of a typical echidna home range size. This individual was also the one that overlapped with other home ranges.
The more median size home range is what we’re really interested in. This gives us a better idea of the typical home range size of the average eastern long-beaked echidna. If we add all the home ranges together and divide we get and average of about 25 hectares. This is a pretty good size home range, lots of area to find insects to munch on and a nice place to find a den.
Interestingly, the home range with the most points recorded was a size of 75 hectares for an adult female. Considering this individual was recored with 65 points of reference this might be a more typical home range size, but it could also just be this individual’s preference. This study was incredibly interesting and a great start to mapping out the needs of the eastern long-beaked echidna.
So what makes a good home range? There are a few necessities that a good home range must contain. Food is definitely important. You must have enough food to sustain yourself before you settle down. Water is also important, but echidnas do not rely on standing bodies of water as much as other mammals. They can get water from the food they eat. The last thing that is incredibly important in a home range is a place to make a den.
During this study, 223 dens of long-beaked echidnas were found. 209 of them were underground dens. Of the ones found above ground, it appears that most of them were utilized by juvenile echidnas. Maybe there is a learning curve for how and where a great den is created. Or the juveniles hadn’t established a permanent home range, yet.
When creating a den the echidna will dig out a main resting place with two separate entrances. That’s good thinking there, always have an escape hatch. If at all possible these dens will be located on the side of sloped earth. It may be easier to dig into a sloped mound and it can also help keep the den from becoming flooded. Boy! These echidnas really know how to build the perfect house!
Whenever I find out that an animal that mates with others of the opposite sex leads a solitary life in a fairly large home range, I know I always ask How do they find each other when it’s time to make babies? I asked this question about the echidna. So how do they find each other? Through scent. When breeding season begins both males and females emit a scent that attracts the opposite sex to them.
Most of the responsibility of finding another echidna lies on the male, and as we discussed in the reproduction episode, he’ll travel quite the distance to ensure that he’s the mate for her. The spur that all echidnas have at some point in their life may have originally been used for venom like the male platypus, but now it’s used for secreting a substance that may attract females during mating season.
The last thing we need to discuss about echidna’s social lives is what happens when they encounter each other outside of breeding season. And that appears to be not much. No sources that I’ve used for this series have said anything about echidna on echidna aggression. It seems that when they do encounter each other outside of the breeding season, they just kind of avoid each other. During breeding season, the worst a male will do to another male is push them out of the love train. No blood and guts death matches for echidnas. 
That’s it for the social structure of echidnas. Thanks for listening to this episode because the social lives of echidnas is my seventh favorite thing about them.
 
If you're enjoying this podcast please recommend me to friends and family and take a moment to give me a rating on whatever platform your listening. It will help me reach more listeners and give the animals I talk about an even better chance at change. 
 
Join me next week for another episode about echidnas.    
 
(Piano Music plays) 
This has been an episode of Ten Things I like About with Kiersten and Company. Original music written and performed by Katherine Camp, piano extraordinaire.

Echidna: Spines

Summary: Ouch! Echidna spines are no joke! Join Kiersten as she discusses this amazing echidna anatomy.
 
For my hearing impaired listeners, a complete transcript of this podcast follows the show notes on Podbean
 
Show Notes: 
Short-beaked Echidna (Tachyglossus aculeates) Fact Sheet: Physical Characteristics, San Diego Wildlife Alliance Library. https://iecl.libguides.com
“Observations on Fur Development in Echidna (Monotremata, Mammalia) Indicate the Spines Precede Hairs in Ontogeny,” by Lorenzo Alibardi, and George Rogers. The Anatomical Record, Vol 298, Issue4, p. 761-770. 
https://doi.org/10.1002/ar.23081
Music written and performed by Katherine Camp
 
Transcript 
(Piano music plays)
Kiersten - This is Ten Things I Like About…a ten minute, ten episode podcast about unknown or misunderstood wildlife.
(Piano music stops)
Welcome to Ten Things I Like About… I’m Kiersten, your host, and this is a podcast about misunderstood or unknown creatures in nature. Some we’ll find right out side our doors and some are continents away but all are fascinating. 
This podcast will focus ten, ten minute episodes on different animals and their amazing characteristics. Please join me on this extraordinary journey, you won’t regret it.
This episode continues echidnas and the sixth thing I like about them is their spines. Last episode we talked about how they defend themselves from the very few predators they have and one of those defense mechanisms was the spines they have on their backs. Today we’re going to take a closer look at these spines and find out what exactly they are and how they work.
All four species of echidnas have spines. You may be asking what exactly is a spine, and this is a great question, listeners. You actually have spines all over your body right now! Not exactly, but spines are modified hairs. They are made out of keratin just like all mammalian hair, including human hair and nails. 
Spines grow out of the skin just like thin hairs. So spines are made up of a medulla, which is the innermost layer of hair. It’s the softest and most fragile layer and functions as the marrow of the hair. The medulla is surrounded by a cortex. This is the thickest layer of a hair and contains most of the pigment, when hair has pigment. The outermost layer is the cuticle which is made up of dead cells. This is also the same anatomy of the softer hairs most mammals carry, including the   echidna.
Underneath the skin the canal that the spines grow out of holds a thick inner root sheath made of cornified cells which surround the growing shaft. This shaft will eventually exit the skin with a sharp, pointed end and grow into the spine. 
Echidnas grow spines on the dorsal, that’s the top, and the lateral, that’s the sides of the body. The number of spines taper off toward the underside of the echidna where you find only softer hairs. Echidnas do have softer hairs on their back and sides, as well as the spines giving them a slightly fuzzy appearance. Echidna spines will vary in size depending on where they are on the body. Some will be longer and some will be shorter so they fit nicely along the body. 
The spines of echidnas have long roots that are embedded in a special layer of muscle. This layer of muscle allows the echidna to move each spine individually. Could you imagine be able to move the hairs on your body individually? That would be so cool! 
This of course aides the echidna in using its spines to protect itself from harm. The spines can be moved individually or as a group depending on what the echidna is doing. 
When used for protection against a predator, the idea is that the predators will get a nose or mouth full of sharp spines that will hopefully make them think twice about trying to continue eating this echidna. You may be thinking of another animal that does the same thing with quills, the North American porcupine. They use their quills to defend themselves just like the echidna with one little difference. When a North American porcupine encounters a predator they will back into the predator’s muzzle or whatever portion of their body that is exposed and the porcupine’s quills will release and stick in the animal’s body part. Definitely gets their point across.
This is not what happens with the echidna. When a predator bites at or swipes at an echidna, their spines stay put. They are not hooked at the ends like the North American Porcupine’s quills and they are made to stay attached until they are naturally shed with age. The spines of an echidna can stay attached for years. 
This may have brought up another question from my intelligent listeners. What is the difference between a quill and a spine? To be completely honest I can’t find a great answer to this question. I can tell you that spines are used to refer to a broader group of modified hairs where quills are a specific type of spine. You often hear the term quill used when talking about porcupines. When doing research for this podcast all the sources I referenced said echidnas have spines. 
In a scientific paper published in 2014 titled “Observations on Fur Development in Echidna” the authors question whether spines are actually modified hairs. They looked at various ages of preserved specimens of baby echidnas to determine if the spines grew from modified hair follicles or different follicles altogether. Turns out they form from different follicles than those of hair, so maybe the spines are not modified hairs at all, but something unique to itself. 
It will be interesting to see what further research reveals.
Thanks for joining me for this pointed discussion of echidna spines because it’s my sixth favorite thing about this amazing monotreme.
 
If you're enjoying this podcast please recommend me to friends and family and take a moment to give me a rating on whatever platform your listening. It will help me reach more listeners and give the animals I talk about an even better chance at change. 
 
Join me next week for another episode about echidnas.    
 
(Piano Music plays) 
This has been an episode of Ten Things I like About with Kiersten and Company. Original music written and performed by Katherine Camp, piano extraordinaire.

Echidna: Defense

Summary: Echidnas don’t have a lot of natural predators but they do have some great defense strategies. Join Kiersten as talks defense in echidnas.
For my hearing impaired listeners, a complete transcript of this podcast follows the show notes on Podbean
 
Show Notes: 
Short-beaked Echidna (Tachyglossus aculeates) Fact Sheet: Behavior and Ecology, San Diego Wildlife Alliance Library. https://iecl.libguides.com
Eastern long-beaked echidna, Animalia, https://animlia.bio
Music written and performed by Katherine Camp
 
Transcript 
(Piano music plays)
Kiersten - This is Ten Things I Like About…a ten minute, ten episode podcast about unknown or misunderstood wildlife.
(Piano music stops)
Welcome to Ten Things I Like About… I’m Kiersten, your host, and this is a podcast about misunderstood or unknown creatures in nature. Some we’ll find right out side our doors and some are continents away but all are fascinating. 
This podcast will focus ten, ten minute episodes on different animals and their amazing characteristics. Please join me on this extraordinary journey, you won’t regret it.
This episode continues echidnas and the fifth thing I like about this monotreme is how they defend themselves.
Echidnas don’t have many natural predators but they do have to worry about feral dogs trying to take a bite out of them. So, if something like this happens an echidna has four options.
Option one is to run. Let’s do a little comparison of anatomy quickly. Many breeds of dogs have legs that are made for running. Of course, there are those that have gotten the short end of the genetic stick and have the short legs that don’t take them very far very fast, but most breeds can run fast. 
I wouldn’t say that echidnas legs are shot but they are not as long as most dogs, and their bodies are a bit wobbly and round. They certainly don’t have the fastest gait and they will not be out running a feral dog. So option number one, may not be the best choice. 
The second option is to dig. Now digging would certainly not be my first choice to protect myself from a predator, but I don’t have large claws made for digging. Remember from the habitat episode that we found out echidnas favor environments that have softer, looser soil. This allows them to find food but it also allows them to dig quickly down into the soil. 
So, option number two is to dig quickly down into the soil deep enough to cover their vulnerable underside and then pop up their spines. Hopefully, the dog will get a snout full of ouchy spines and decide to pursue another meal. 
Option three is hide. If they can find cover quickly they may be able to wedge themselves into a rock crevice or hollow long. They’ll squeeze in far enough to cover their face, legs and belly leaving their spines sticking out. This makes it pretty difficult for a predator to get a good grip and pull them out. 
The fourth option is similar to the last two but without all the digging. That statement probably gives it away, so listener, you’ve probably figured out that their spines are their fourth option. If they cannot dig or run, they will simply curl up into a ball and pop their spines out. 
The short-beaked echidna is one of Australia’s most abundant mammals, so these options must be working out for them. 
  That’s all for this episode on defense. Thanks for listening because this is my fifth favorite thing about echidnas.
 
If you're enjoying this podcast please recommend me to friends and family and take a moment to give me a rating on whatever platform your listening. It will help me reach more listeners and give the animals I talk about an even better chance at change. 
 
Join me next week for another episode about echidnas.    
 
(Piano Music plays) 
This has been an episode of Ten Things I like About with Kiersten and Company. Original music written and performed by Katherine Camp, piano extraordinaire.

Echidna: Reproduction

Summary: Making baby echidnas is weird! Join Kiersten as she talks echidna baby-making.
 
For my hearing impaired listeners, a complete transcript of this podcast follows the show notes on Podbean
 
Show Notes: 
“Echidna penises: Why They’re so Weird,” by Angela Heathcote, Australian Geographic, May 24, 2021. https://www.australiangeographic.com.au
“Echidna trains: Explained,” by Australian Geographic, August 6, 2021. https://www.australiangeographic.com.au
“Getting out of a mammalian egg: the egg tooth and caruncle of the echidna,” by Jane C. Fenelon, Abbie Bennetts, Neal Anthill, Micheal Pyne, Stephen D. Johnston, Alistair R. Evans, Abigail S. Tucker, and Marilyn B. Renfree. Developmental Biology, Volume 495, March 2023, pg 8-18.
“Unveiling the echidna pouch: Insights from recent research.” The Wildlife Preservation Society of Queensland. https://wildlife.org.au
Classification of Living Things: Echidna Reproduction, by Denis O’Neil. https://www.palomar.edu
Music written and performed by Katherine Camp
 
Transcript 
(Piano music plays)
Kiersten - This is Ten Things I Like About…a ten minute, ten episode podcast about unknown or misunderstood wildlife.
(Piano music stops)
Welcome to Ten Things I Like About… I’m Kiersten, your host, and this is a podcast about misunderstood or unknown creatures in nature. Some we’ll find right out side our doors and some are continents away but all are fascinating. 
This podcast will focus ten, ten minute episodes on different animals and their amazing characteristics. Please join me on this extraordinary journey, you won’t regret it.
This episode continues echidnas and the fourth thing I like about them is how they reproduce. I have to tell ya that this is the best episode yet! Be prepared to have your mind blown because echidna reproduction is unbelievable.
Reproduction always starts with the wooing, so let’s start there, as well. You can always tell when echidna mating season is by the lines of males that are following a female. No kidding, male echidnas form “love trains” behind a female and follow her for days. I have found several different sources that say mating can occur anywhere from mid-May to early September. Males will follow a female around until they are the last one standing. Love trains can vary in number from 4 males to 11 males. The males will follow the females jostling each other, sometimes even pushing each other into ditches, to be the last male following the female. 
Once they’ve joined a love train the males are very focused on what they’re doing. Very few things can distract them from their goal of mating, including being weighed by scientists. Peggy Rismiller has studied echidnas for 30 years and she has picked up the last male in a love train to weigh them and, as soon as she puts them down, they are off again following the female.
Males will travel long distances to court a female. She tracked one male who traveled 2 km or 1.2 miles a day to court two different females. If the male looses sight of the female he’s courting, no worries, he can follow her scent. Both males and females emit a musky scent during breeding season. 
After a male has outlasted the others, if the female is receptive, she’ll lay down on the ground and relax her spines. But his hard work is not done. Now the male has to dig down into the soil next to the female so he can line up their cloacas. Mating is performed cloaca to cloaca. Once the positioning is just right, the male will insert his penis into the female’s cloaca. Copulation can last from 30 minutes to an hour and a half.
We’re going to take a moment to talk about the echidna penis because this particular organ has been deemed the weirdest reproductive organ in the animal kingdom by Smithsonian Magazine. An echidna’s penis is bright red in color and has four heads. Yes, you heard correctly, four heads. They do not use their penis for urination, like most other mammals, so the penis was able to become more elaborate. It appears that they only use two of the heads at a time when breeding. This is very unusual for mammals but it is see in some reptiles. More research needs to be done to understand how the echidna penis works and why it is structured the way it is. The penis is also fairly long reaching approximately 1/3 of the echidnas body length when erect. 
Stay with me listeners because it just keeps getting weirder. Once the female is pregnant she develops a pouch. Only pregnant female echidnas develop a pouch, and they only keep it while they are incubating their single egg. There are four stages of the pouch. Dr. Kate Dutton-Regester has been researching echidna pouches and took over 200 pictures of nine female echidna’s developing pouches. At the beginning of the breeding season the pouch is flat and difficult to see, by the time the female needs to incubate her egg the pouch margins have drawn together like a drawstring bag closing the pouch so incubation can begin. Once her offspring has left the pouch, it recedes over 12-30 days until it is once again flat. That is truly amazing!! 
Next step: lay an egg. Echidna females lay only one egg a year, or at least as far as we know. The egg is 1/2 to 2/3 of an inch long. The shell is like hard leather, similar to some reptile eggs. The egg is laid through the cloaca, then the mother has to get it into her pouch. To do this, she’ll curve her body into a tight “C” shape scooping up the egg with the tops of her hind feet and then lifting up her feet until the egg rolls into the pouch. 
Whoosh! I’m tired just thinking of doing that. Talk about good core strength. The egg will incubate for approximately 10 days before it hatches. Echidna eggs have much less yolk than reptile and bird eggs because the embryo only needs that nutrient source for 10 days. To emerge from the egg, the embryo develops and egg tooth similar to an egg tooth on a baby reptile. This egg tooth helps the young echidna break out of the leathery egg shell, then disappears. Baby echidnas are called puggles. That is literally the cutest name I have ever heard for any animal offspring. I just can’t right now!
The puggle is only the size of a raisin when it hatches and is hairless and blind. The tiny puggle will grasp the coarse hair inside the pouch and pull itself up to the milk patches inside the pouch. While puggles are in the pouch they consume milk produced by the mother’s mammary glands. They do not suckle because echidnas have no nipples, so instead they lick the milk as it seeps through the skin over the mammary glands. Puggles will remain in the pouch for approximately 45 days until they begin to develop spines. That could be a sticky situation.
Once they leave the pouch, the puggle will remain in a den for 6 to 7 months. During that time, mom will leave to forage for food and come back to feed the puggle milk. At 7 months, the puggle is old enough to strike out on its own. Echidnas can live from 15 to 40 years, but average about 10 years in the wild.  
 
  I don’t know about you, but this was one weird reproduction episode, but it is definitely my fourth favorite thing about echidnas. 
 
If you're enjoying this podcast please recommend me to friends and family and take a moment to give me a rating on whatever platform your listening. It will help me reach more listeners and give the animals I talk about an even better chance at change. 
 
Join me next week for another episode about echidnas.    
 
(Piano Music plays) 
This has been an episode of Ten Things I like About with Kiersten and Company. Original music written and performed by Katherine Camp, piano extraordinaire.

Echidna: Diet and Digestion

Summary: We all gotta eat, right? The echidna eats insects. Take a trip with Kiersten as she travels through the digestive track of the echidna. 
 
For my hearing impaired listeners, a complete transcript of this podcast follows the show notes on Podbean
 
Show Notes: 
Short-beaked Echidna (Tachyglossus aculeates) Fact Sheet: Diet and Feeding, San Diego Wildlife Alliance Library. https://iecl.libguides.com
“Characterizing the Gut Microbiomes in Wild and Captive Short-Beaked Echidnas Reveals Diet-Associated Changes,” by Tahlia Perry, Ella West, Raphael Eisenhower, Alan Stenhouse, Isabella Wilson, Belinda Laming, Peggy Rismiller, Michelle Shaw, and Frank Grützner
Music written and performed by Katherine Camp
 
Transcript 
(Piano music plays)
Kiersten - This is Ten Things I Like About…a ten minute, ten episode podcast about unknown or misunderstood wildlife.
(Piano music stops)
Welcome to Ten Things I Like About… I’m Kiersten, your host, and this is a podcast about misunderstood or unknown creatures in nature. Some we’ll find right out side our doors and some are continents away but all are fascinating. 
This podcast will focus ten, ten minute episodes on different animals and their amazing characteristics. Please join me on this extraordinary journey, you won’t regret it.
This episode continues echidnas and the third thing I like about this amazing monotreme is what they eat and how they digest it. I know that sound like a strange thing to like, but it’s really quite interesting.
One of the ways to tell if you have an echidna nearby is the distinctive way they hunt for food. The prey that echidnas are after lives mainly underground, so they poke holes in the soil with their long snouts. The holes are called ‘nose pokes”. Nose pokes are the width of the echidnas snout and the depth can tell you the species of echidna that’s digging around in your backyard. The depth, of course, depends on the length of the echidna’s snout. Long-beaked echidnas will produce deeper nose pokes than short-beaked echidnas. Once they find what they’er looking for, they use their long claws to tear open the invertebrates nests.
How they find their prey is not well understood. Do they use a sense of smell? Do they use vibration detection? Do they use the sense of touch? We’re not entirely sure, but it may be a combination of all three.
So, what are these echidnas digging around for underground. They are classified as myrmecophages. If you can remember way back to our first series about pangolins, you know that myrmecophages eat mainly ants. And that is one of the main prey items of the echidna. They specialize in eating termites, ants, scarab beetle larvae also known as pasture grubs, and moth larvae also known as grass grubs. When they come across beetle larva during the nose poke stage, scientists have noticed them using a corkscrew like motion to extract the larvae. 
They actually prefer the social living invertebrates such as termites and ants because they offer more reward for their effort. Which I can totally understand! Of those two insects, termites are higher on the list because they have softer bodies than ants and they tend to live in larger colonies. When possible, echidnas avoid ants, termites, and other insects that bite, sting, or have other chemical defenses.  Sometime they have no choice but to go after ants, so they focus their efforts on the more defenseless areas of the ant colony such as the queen, the larvae, and the pupae. 
The general rule of thumb is to avoid prey that bites back, but after hibernation and before raising young, echidnas may endure some abuse to build up their fats stores.
They have also been seen foraging around trees. Here they’ll stick their snouts under loose bark looking for termites and insect larvae. If it is a rotted tree or log, they will use their powerful claws to tear open the trunk exposing the insects within. 
They are not reliant on water to drink so they can live in areas without easy access to water sources.
So now we know what they eat, let’s find out how they eat. It all starts with a long sticky tongue. The short-beaked echidna can extend its tongue seven inches or 18 cm out of its mouth. They can do that more than 100 times a minute! Their genus name, Tachyglossus, actually means fast tongue.  A combination of circular and longitudinal muscles allows the tongue to extend and contract. The tip of the tongue is very flexible. It’s so flexible it can curve into a U-shape. That’s probably pretty helpful for scooping up lots of yummy termites. They do posses taste buds which are located at the back of the tongue. 
They must eat small ants and termites limited to only 55mm because that’s the only thing that will fit in their mouths. Their mouth doesn’t open very wide. If you ever hear someone say an echidna bit them, we know that’s a tall tail! Now, of course, they mainly focus on prey items that are already that size of smaller, but they can tear apart things that might be a bit bigger but is something worth consuming. They can hold the item down with their claws and tear it apart with their tongue. 
Like many other animals who have an ant based diet, echidnas have no teeth. The do have a hard palate on the roof of their mouth that they use in conjunction with their tongue to grind their food. There are keratin spines at the base of the tongue that smoosh the food up against the hard palate grinding the insects into a paste. Mmmm. Nothing like a little insect paste to hit the spot. 
Echidnas digestion is very slow. Their stomach is a single chambered organ that is elastic. It can hold a lot of insects, but it has very low levels of acid, so their stomach is not like many other species of animals, including humans, that rely on acid to digest the food they injest. Echidnas stomachs act more like a cow’s rumen which is a chamber that holds food and digests it with the help of bacteria. Digestion in these monotremes is not well understood but scientists have determined that plant matter may have a bigger role in echidna digestion than previously thought. 
Echidnas held in captivity such as zoos and rehabilitation facilities tend to have quite a few gastric problems. Researchers are now collecting scat, that’s poo, from wild echidnas and captive echidnas to determine what a healthy microbiome looks like for an echidna. The more we know about what keeps their stomachs functioning properly in the wild, the better we can make their diets in captivity. 
Thanks for following the digestive track of the echidna with me because it’s make third favorite thing about them. 
 
If you're enjoying this podcast please recommend me to friends and family and take a moment to give me a rating on whatever platform your listening. It will help me reach more listeners and give the animals I talk about an even better chance at change. 
 
Join me next week for another episode about echidnas.    
 
(Piano Music plays) 
This has been an episode of Ten Things I like About with Kiersten and Company. Original music written and performed by Katherine Camp, piano extraordinaire.