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Echidna's is funnee
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<blockquote data-quote="Marguerite" data-source="post: 261025" data-attributes="member: 1991"><p>They are cute. Not so common now (at least, not so commonly found in suburbia). When I was a kid and we lived on the city outskirts, I remember a couple of times when we had one up near the back door and spooked by the dogs. One time I remember my brother had to get a spade and carefully lift the rolled up ball onto the spade to carry it out of our garden and back into the bushland. It had been trying to burrow under the rubbish bin, and that's not a good thing - they can knock over even a large bin. They wedge into a crevice and puff up a bit. This tips the object over a bit, then they wedge in a bit deeper, puff up again, and so it continues. One of the uni field stations had an echidna get into the store-room and it knocked over a freezer with this technique.</p><p></p><p>The zoo down the road lets you handle them, they really are cute - when they're tame. Their ant substitute in the zoo includes mashed banana.</p><p></p><p>One time I was driving through the bush near home with the kids, and there was an echidna on the road. I was worried tat a car might skittle it so I stopped and got out to move it along. Trouble is, it saw me coming and curled into a ball - still in the middle of the road! You can't hurry these things, if you startle them they curl up. So now we travel with gauntlets in the car so if we see one again curled into a ball, we can pick it up and carry it to the side of the road...</p><p></p><p>I do think echidnas have a much more sensible way of childbirth than porcupines or hedgehogs. I hate the thought of delivering something with spines...</p><p></p><p>They really are quite closely related to platypuses. I never realised just how close, until I saw a platypus skull and an echidna skull side by side. If you can picture the bill of a platypus as loooking a bit like the sides of a lyre, and in an echidna, those two sides are brought in close together to form the framework of a tube - otherwise the skull is very similar. The feet etc too, but the echidna hasn't the webbing. They have the same poisoned spurs in the male, though. And both species are great at digging.</p><p></p><p>They're not as spiky as they look, either - there's a lot of hair between those spikes. The spikes themselves feel rubbery, until they go into a ball and it's all sticking out.</p><p></p><p>Cute. But maybe not that smart. How smart do you have to be, to outwit an ant?</p><p></p><p>Marg</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Marguerite, post: 261025, member: 1991"] They are cute. Not so common now (at least, not so commonly found in suburbia). When I was a kid and we lived on the city outskirts, I remember a couple of times when we had one up near the back door and spooked by the dogs. One time I remember my brother had to get a spade and carefully lift the rolled up ball onto the spade to carry it out of our garden and back into the bushland. It had been trying to burrow under the rubbish bin, and that's not a good thing - they can knock over even a large bin. They wedge into a crevice and puff up a bit. This tips the object over a bit, then they wedge in a bit deeper, puff up again, and so it continues. One of the uni field stations had an echidna get into the store-room and it knocked over a freezer with this technique. The zoo down the road lets you handle them, they really are cute - when they're tame. Their ant substitute in the zoo includes mashed banana. One time I was driving through the bush near home with the kids, and there was an echidna on the road. I was worried tat a car might skittle it so I stopped and got out to move it along. Trouble is, it saw me coming and curled into a ball - still in the middle of the road! You can't hurry these things, if you startle them they curl up. So now we travel with gauntlets in the car so if we see one again curled into a ball, we can pick it up and carry it to the side of the road... I do think echidnas have a much more sensible way of childbirth than porcupines or hedgehogs. I hate the thought of delivering something with spines... They really are quite closely related to platypuses. I never realised just how close, until I saw a platypus skull and an echidna skull side by side. If you can picture the bill of a platypus as loooking a bit like the sides of a lyre, and in an echidna, those two sides are brought in close together to form the framework of a tube - otherwise the skull is very similar. The feet etc too, but the echidna hasn't the webbing. They have the same poisoned spurs in the male, though. And both species are great at digging. They're not as spiky as they look, either - there's a lot of hair between those spikes. The spikes themselves feel rubbery, until they go into a ball and it's all sticking out. Cute. But maybe not that smart. How smart do you have to be, to outwit an ant? Marg [/QUOTE]
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