Secretly Incredibly Fascinating - Echidnas

Episode Date: June 30, 2025

Alex Schmidt and Katie Goldin explore why echidnas are secretly incredibly fascinating.Visit http://sifpod.fun/ for research sources and for this week's bonus episode.Come hang out with us on the SIF Discord: https://discord.gg/wbR96nsGg5

Hey folks, we have a treat for you. And you already got an email about this if you are a Maximum Fun member. In the latest Max Fun Drive, you all put so much support into our show. We were able to pay an artist to make commemorative digital art to celebrate the 250th episode of the show. That art is ready right now. It is in the BoCo vault. You should also have an email if you're a member with a link to go see it.

If you're not a member, you can also go ahead and get that art as well as previous digital art for previous Milestone SIF episodes. There's a special unique character celebrating each and every episode of our entire run. So it's really just a wonderful cartoony kaleidoscope of everything we've done. MaximumFun.org slash join is the place to support our show, make the entire thing possible maximumfund.org slash join. Thank you. Echidnas, known for being animals, famous for being hedgehog shaped animals. Nobody thinks much about them. So let's have some fun. Let's find out why Echidnas are secretly

incredibly fascinating. Hey there, folks. Welcome to a whole new podcast episode, a podcast all about why being alive is more interesting than people think it is. My name is Alex Schmidt and I'm not alone because I'm joined by my co-host Katie Golden. Katie! Yes. What is your relationship to or opinion of echidnas? I love them. That's how it is. We're in a very loving relationship. I love everything

about these little guys. They're so funky. They look like something out of a surrealist painting. They are truly very weird in terms of their anatomy and how they work as animals. You know, thumbs up Australia. You got another, you know, got another good one. Yeah, totally. I mean, you think about animals more than I do. You have a wonderful podcast, Creature Feature, everyone should listen to. But I feel like in my learning about animals, there was a stage where people said, Australia is different. Oh, you learned about the animals? Now we're opening the Australia closet in the back of the store. So you can see those. And Echidnas are one of those. It's awesome.

They have a lot of marsupials and monotremes. And both of those like to play by slightly different rules than the rest of the mammals. So it's, you know, platypus included. But yeah, I actually find these guys kind of weirder than platypuses. Platypuses actually make more sense to me than these guys. So I'm excited to talk about them. And also two tiny programming notes. One is that when folks spread up this topic, thank you to Dacoupe Bear for suggesting it, also LS Greger and others for supporting it in the polls. A lot of the folks brought up knuckles the echidna from the Sonic games.

That's our bonus topic. It's going to be all knuckles. All knuckles. And then I've also found this pronounced more like echidna and more like echidna, and I find I just go back and forth. Please just go with it folks. It's the same. It's fine.

Tomato, tomato. Yeah. They, you know, it's another thing. This, I don't know if you're going to talk about this so much, but I think people, like in terms of their size, there are different species of echidna, but the, at least for one of the species, the long beak echidnas,

those are like the size that people think platypuses are. People imagine platypuses to be bigger than they actually are. Platypuses are quite small. They're like a month old kitten. They're pretty small, the platypus. When you look at pictures of adult platypus, people are usually pretty shocked by how small they actually are. Whereas a kidneys are the ones that are actually a big handful. And I think people have it flipped.

Like people think kidneys are the little ones, platypuses are sort of the bigger ones, but it's actually the opposite. A kidneys are, like they're a nice armful of weird spiky snooty little animal. That's exciting. I, in my research, really focused on a kid, and I miss that platypuses are so small. Apparently they're only a little more than a foot long as an adult. Great.

Maybe maybe approaching a foot and a half or two feet. That's that's not that big. Because a lot of that length is duck face or tail, you know? Yeah, exactly. You can hold them in both of your hands. Like if you cup both your hands, you can fit a platypus in there very comfortably for some species.

How do I do this? How do I do this right now? And then with the echidnas, that's not gonna, at least for the long-beaked echidnas, which are bigger, that's not gonna work. It's too big. Yeah. Let's talk all about the echidnas and the long beak and the short beak and so on. Because on every episode we lead with a quick set of fascinating numbers and statistics

this week that's in a segment called... I might read some stats, that's the best idea. Gonna put them on the CIF podcast. Golf clap, golf clap, golf claps all around. Thank you. That day was submitted by Action Populated on the Discord. Thank you. We have a new name for this every week. Please make a Missillian way I came bad as possible. Submit yours through Discord or to cifpod.gmail.com. The first number for echidnas is two or four. We know how to count how many echidna species there are in the world, but people tend to call it either two or four because in general there are short-beaked echidnas and long-beaked

echidnas, and then also the long-beaked breakdown into three entire species, according to taxonomists. Yeah, I mean, taxonomy is always a little bit fiddly because you can sometimes have a species and have an argument about whether there's two different species or if one's a subspecies. It's not necessarily that they discover and undiscover species of these animals. It's that there's like genetic research or arguments about whether or not they are, they count as an entirely different species

when they're close enough genetically, or if they're like a subspecies, things like that. Yeah, and the short-beaked echidna is the one I've probably seen the most pictures of because that species lives all over Australia and nearby islands. They're relatively large numbers of them. And then long-beaked echidnas, all three species around the island of New Guinea.

And so if you think of like quote unquote Australian animal, it's probably a short-beaked echidna. Those are a little bit smaller. They tend to be active during the day, long-beaked are at night, and long beaked are in greater danger of extinction. Wildest number there is 2023, because in the year 2023, people documented a living member of one of the long beaked echidna species with a camera for the first time. Wow. 2023. They're pretty, I think outside of like natural rescue areas and preserves, they're very,

very shy. Yeah, yeah. And apparently all the echidnas are shy, but especially the long-beaked and then they're in just parts of New Guinea and in smaller numbers. And so we have surprisingly little observation of some of these. Because that one that we hadn't documented, it's a species that's called Attenborough's long-beaked echidna in honor of Sir David Attenborough.

Yeah, well, he's a nice guy. He lies in the dirt and talks about echidnas, even when the cameras aren't rolling. That's what people don't know, is that he's just always doing that, where he's like lying in the dirt talking about a kidnass. But like when people notice he's doing it, the cameraman come over and try to catch him in the act. Now, now I want him to do all sorts of animal behaviors

that would be relatively impolite in human society. But because he's describing it in such a nice voice as he does it, we're all like, that's great. Yeah. He's like, he's peeing on a chair leg explaining how this helps him mark his territory and we all accept it. And we're like, oh yeah, I wonder who he's going to mate with in his territory. That he's wallowing and we're like, look at that little guy wallow. That's how he keeps cool.

It's the only way they can keep cool. But then who David Attenborough's David Attenborough documentary, it's sort of a, who do we get to narrate the David Attenborough documentary? It's the eternal question of nature. Yeah. Yeah, because there's the Western Longbeak-to-Kidna, Longbeak tequidna, and then Attenborough's Longbeak tequidna. And in 1961, researchers decided they had discovered the Attenborough's Longbeak tequidna species. In 1961, they found one deceased specimen. They identified it, put it in a

museum, said, surely we'll see more of this. And then nobody identified more of them until 2023. Wow. And in the intervening 60 plus years, scientists wondered, did these go extinct? Like, did we kind of find one when they were on the way out? And apparently not. Yeah, they're just real reclusive. I mean, they spend a lot of their time just snuffling around in the leaf litter in these forests. So I don't think that it's like super easy to spot them.

It does seem really hard. And also like, if you do see one, how do you tell it apart from the other two? From a different, because yeah, they are quite similar looking. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, we really won't spend any time on the differences between these because it's not that visible or easy to figure out. It's only the long-beaked and short-beaked are pretty easy to tell apart. And that's about it. Yeah, that's it. Yeah, yeah.

And yeah, and we only found Attenborough's long-beaked echidna for the second time ever because in 2023 a research team from Oxford University tried to study the entire ecosystem of what's called the Cyclops Mountains in the Indonesian half of the island of New Guinea. We'll link just the geography of New Guinea as an island that's about half in Indonesia and half its own country of Papua New Guinea. And they were looking for all sorts of things in these mountains. They found a lot of insect species. They found amphibians. They found a kind of tiny shrimp that live in wet soil and in trees instead of, say, an ocean. It's amazing.

Yeah, man. Tree shrimp. It's going to be my next sort of food sensation. Can we get some tree shrimp for the table? Yeah, some tree shrimp poppers. Thank you. And they just pop over like they fly out of the kitchen. Yeah, that's pretty great. I love it when you find out there's like weird crustacean type animals are just like not in the ocean.

Yeah. And so they're doing this observation with dozens of trail cameras. Like they wire up a bunch of video cameras and they say, wow, we're finding like dozens of species. This is already great. And then toward the end of the project, Anne Echidna shuffles onto camera. And they look at the footage and they say, this is amazing. This is the second identified Antenbrows longbeak echidna ever. And they're not extinct, it turns out. I think that given that it's not like a heavily surveilled area, it's safe to say that like just because you don't see them doesn't mean they're extinct.

Exactly. And I also just love that some of these Echidna species are basically secret. Like, we still need to find out a lot more about these. There's a lot to learn about the world. Yeah, they're just secretly incredibly secret. That's it. That's all we know about them. They're cis?

Yes. Yeah. And yeah, and PBS Nature says that the Eastern Long Beaked Echidna is listed as vulnerable by the IUCN that does these designations of species in trouble and the other two are critically endangered. Meanwhile, we think there are millions of short-beaked echidnas in Australia and that species is of least concern. They're not like easy to find or super underfoot but it's not a species where we're concerned that they're gonna go away. Right. Unless you are concerned that they are gonna take over, then maybe we should be a little more concerned. I welcome the takeover. Seems great. They're very cool. I don't know how much you're going to talk about their snoots and the superpowers of

their snoots, but I trust them to run the government. Yeah, I love that this episode will be very biological. There's almost too much echidna anatomy and biology to talk about, and so we're just going to be all over the place of, and then this is amazing gonna be all over the place of and then this is amazing and then this is amazing and that is amazing it's like even for an animal episode this is pretty biological because echidna bodies are wild and yeah and then also those short-beaked echidnas are a target of the pet trade yeah that's not great we don't we don't think that will like end their numbers but probably shouldn't keep an echidna as

a pet. And Australian law says that there are some ways to legally sell an echidna pet if it's been raised in captivity. But the thing is, it's really hard to breed echidnas in captivity. And the number here is 2019. In 2019, forensic scientists created a database of echidna DNA by looking at the DNA in their spines in order to fight the illegal trade of echidnas. Ooh, this is exciting. This is like CSI echidna. This is exciting.

It's those exact same kind of scientists, yeah. And echidnas are covered in spines and those are made of keratin. It's like the hair and fingernails of humans. It's like the scales of pangolins, if people remember the pangolin episode. Around 2019, a team of forensic scientists at the Australian Museum and also working with law enforcement, they found that there were at least 70 echidnas listed for sale as pets in Australia. But all of Australia's zoos had only successfully bred about 30 echidnas in the previous 10 years combined. And so they said, just based on the numbers, it's unlikely animal breeders bred all these. They're probably just catching them in the wild and

forging papers to sell them. Yeah, like faking baby photos of the echidnas, like where they Photoshop on little diapers, like, no, we raised this one. See, look. Right. Fake baptism. Fake riding a bike. Yeah. The problem with, one of the problems with the pet trade is not necessarily that this is like, people might think like there's plenty of echidnas, they're not going to make the echidnas go extinct. Like what's the problem with the pet trade? One of the big problems is disease. So zoonotic diseases are a huge concern with the pet trade.

So when you bring animals that don't normally have a lot of contact with human beings or different animals, right? Like, echidnas are not a very social animal with like a huge giant colonies of other echidnas, right? And so you're bringing them and having them nose to nose, snoot to snoot with a lot of different animals. And that's not good for diseases jumping from human to ech kitten or a kitten to human. And the other thing is just like, it is really like these are, they're not great pets, I

wouldn't imagine. I think that they, it seems like they're going to be happy as just snoofling around in leaf litter and forests. And that's really hard to recreate like a giant snoofle zone in your backyard. I think it's probably not going to be adequate. Exactly. Yeah, a few sources this week, they all said that echidnas are both very plentiful in Australia and also not seen that often because they're very shy and don't like being around us. And so if you keep it as a pet, it has to be around us all the time. That's

not what it wants. Come on. Yeah, it's going gonna stress it out. And yeah, and so now as of 2019, Australian authorities can use a database of echidna DNA to check out a pet trader's claim. Like they can take DNA from the keratin spine of that echidna and check whether its parents are probably wilds versus the known echidnas in captivity. And then does the echidna get like a reprieve? Does it get let go if it's... That would, if they could specifically find the parents, they could like send it back to its family. That would be amazing.

Almost kind of a step back. The next number is two because platypuses and echidnas are the two broad kinds of monotremes in the modern world. There's really just one platypus species today. It's so weird. It's such a strange group because all the other monotremes are extinct. These are the only extant monotremes. It's so funky. They're so unique compared to other mammals, even compared to marsupials, which are quite weird. mammals even compared to like marsupials which are quite weird. Yeah, they, you know, they're the only... Well, I don't want to steal your thunder if you've got stuff. But yeah, it's just super weird. Like, they are mammals, but they're just so different from the rest of placental mammals. Yeah, I was always kind of loosely told that mammals don't lay eggs and then monotremes are mammals that lay eggs. So there you go.

The categories are not black and white in biology, but yeah, they are mammals. They do lay eggs. They also lactate, but they don't have nipples. So that means that their milk just kind of like leaks out of their bellies through their pores and just free for all. They also have a cloaca, which is not something that mammals typically have. Like the cloaca is found in birds, reptiles, amphibians. You know, it's this amazing hole that does a lot of different stuff.

But males also have a penis and it's a really weird one. So it's a, they're pretty all over the place, these guys. I also assumed monotremes would be named after the egg part, but apparently the word monotreme comes from etymology, meaning one opening. Like they're named after the cloaca. The cloaca. For urination, defecation, mating. Yeah.

That's one thing that's really weird if I can just make one more note about the penis, which is that the males have this very strange penis, but they don't actually urinate out of the penis. They urinate out of the cloaca. They only use the penis for sperm transfer. That's it. I guess this isn't a takeaway number one. A male echidna has a forefront penis, which is sort of like having a double reptile penis, sort of.

Yeah, these look, look, I normally don't say Google these things because it's usually not safe, but in the safest way that you can, look up echidna penises because they're so... To me, it's funnier than it is gross or lewd. Because it looks like a little hand. It looks like a little cartoon hand. They have four heads, essentially, like four apertures. And again, like this is not for urination. This is only for sperm transfer.

Yes. Yeah, and apparently they like tuck it away except when they're using it and it's... Very polite. It is honestly. Ed's key sources here are Science Writing for the New York Times by Natalie Angier, a 2021 study in the journal Sexual Development, and then a mental floss piece which is one of many ways you can see pictures because it has four glands. It has four sort of tips on it.

And then some observers compare this to the hemipenes of reptiles because a hemipene is a pair of reproductive organs tucked into the reptile's body usually until it's time to mate. That's sort of like a two-headed penis and then a kidneys basically have a double two-headed penis. It's four heads. Yeah. And if you actually, if you do look at hemipenes of the reptiles, they look like medieval weapons often because they're like spiky and weird. It looks like some kind of weird medieval weapon that probably didn't work very well. But yeah, and I believe also for snakes and reptiles, they do not urinate out of those.

Those are just for looking cool and passing on their DNA. The medieval element. Our recent episode about VHS tapes, people were very excited about your fandom of the Robin Hood Disney movie. And so now I'm thinking about Sir Hiss having some kind of weapon and penis combo and the gritty reboot. They never, that never made it. There's, they really need to do a live action remake of Robin Hood.

Now I know that Disney doesn't have a great track record with live action remakes. They're usually superfluous at best and terrible monstrosities at worst. But hear me out. Okay. Sir Hiss gets a hemipenis. We get the freaking Lion King treatment

where these are realistic ass animals and like to the T and they're just fighting and you just got a fox and a Sir His fighting and you see Sir His is weird mating apparatus. There's a, you know, do do do do do do do do. Oh my God. You know, I think it'd be cool. We're going to be like only a quarter of the way through the pitch. And Disney has already walked us into the parking lot and not validated. And they've already put black bags over our head and are taking us to the facility. And this penis, apparently we've done further continuing study of it because, wow, there's so much going on.

And we think that the male echidna is able to ejaculate from just two of the four structures at a time. Yeah. And so when a male mates with a female, it uses essentially half of the penis so it can use its other half on the next female. And then they also have a faster refractory time period. So a study in 2021 suggested that a male echidna could ejaculate 10 times before it needed a significant break to recharge. Golf clap, golf clap, golf clap.

Good job guys. So it's less a garden sprinkler and more of like a machine gun. Right. It's like 1980s action movie weapons. Yeah. Right, right, right. Which is really, really important for males when they're trying to get as much spomb out there as possible. possible and being able to have like a, like there are, there are little mammals that will mate so frequently until they like collapse and have heart attacks and die. Because the idea is like the more genetic material they get out, the more successful they're going to be, right? Like it's the more likely that they're going to have something that carries on their, their genes. And for it, it really depends on the species. There's a lot of types of animals where the males actually do invest more in parental care and it's less about,

it's more about quality over quantity. Um, but there's plenty of animals where it's about quantity over quality. So this is one of them. Yeah. Yeah. Especially with the males. males because because the other amazing thing to me about the reproduction is takeaway number two Echidnas are named after a mythological serpent woman Hmm partly because of how female echidnas lay and carry eggs now I'm excited cuz I didn't know this and I thought I knew everything about echidnas. But entomology, now entomology I know a lot about, but entomology gets me. So I'm excited about this.

And echidnas eat bugs. So they love entomology too. It's delicious to them. They also do. Yeah. Yeah, that the name at least in like European languages like English, this name Echidna comes from Greek mythology. A being named Echidna was the product of monstrous mating between sea and land beings, generated a monster with the head and breasts of a human woman. Hot woman and the lower body and tail of a serpent. A little less hot, but still hot, I guess.

And so, yeah, like Europeans partly reuse that name for this animal because it's like a mammal but does eggs, and they're like, it's a reptile and a mammal all at once, like the serpent woman monster. Yeah. And they just straight up reuse the name they didn't adapt it at all yeah I love it when like when old Europeans were confused by mammals that didn't play by the rules like when it was with beavers it's like they're almost seafood right cuz they're in the water a lot all all Europeans and also lots of people till today they're like I only know a couple of things so if there's a new, I only know a couple of things.

So if there's a new thing, I'm naming it after the old thing. Right, exactly. That's all I got. Yeah. And yeah, and then because it's such a Greek mythology name, First Nations peoples in Australia had totally different names for it. Name in the Gamilare language is Bigibilla, and the name in the Warlpiri language is Yinarlingi. It's all just completely different names because they didn't have Greek mythology, of course.

Right, right. They didn't see this fuzzy, spiky animal with absolutely no tits and think, what about the Greek half snake lady with boobies? Right, right. And it's also, it doesn't attack humans at all. It's been a useful food source for people. It's just like a positive animal in your life. So why would you name it after a monster?

It's just a cute little snorfler who goes after bugs in the leaf litter. Yeah, that's all it wants to do. And so yeah, that's where they get their name. I had no idea. And a lot of it is because Europeans were like, this mammal lays eggs, I can't handle it. Right. And the egg laying process is amazing. Some echidnas, apparently especially a subspecies

on what's called Kangaroo Island, south of the Australian mainland, they'll do something called a love train, which is where one female echidna is followed by a long line of male echidnas shuffling around and hoping to mate. The most perverted conga line that is out there. Yeah. Yeah. The strange, specifically sexual penis of the male plus the female's reproductive anatomy.

The goal is to have as many sperm compete for just one egg. A female echidna lays just one egg at a time. It's wild because she's got some sort of marsupial characteristics as well. She's got a pouch and she... It's a weird kind of step between placental mammals where we give birth, we're live-bearing, we don't lay eggs. And then you look at marsupials and they do have live births of like teeny tiny little beans that have to crawl their way up into this pouch where they continue to develop

until they're actual identifiable babies. But then you've got like this in-between step, which is the echidnas where they lay the eggs, but they store the eggs in a pouch. So the egg continues to develop and hatches inside the pouch. So it's kind of this weird in-betweeny step between laying eggs and just like laying an egg,

sticking it in a nest and being like, good luck, and having a live birth as a mammal. Yes, I didn't know any of that before researching because it's so profoundly confusing, especially if you have like a loose knowledge of kangaroos, let's say. Yeah. And you're like, okay, so there's humans and kangaroos. Those are the two mammal ways. And then...

Those are the two mammal ways. And then... Those are the two animals. Yeah. And like you said, this echidna baby, also the human nickname for these babies, at least in English, is a puggle. Puggle. Great. So cute. You can find pictures of that too. We'll link some. They're really cute. But yeah, the echidna, it lays an egg and then doesn't leave it in a nest or whatever. The female forms a somewhat temporary pouch by contracting abdominal muscles and then incubates the egg against her body for about 10 days. I mean, we all sometimes clench to like try to look good in bathing suits. But imagine doing that for a long time to wait for this egg to hatch.

Just the control, the core control is impressive. Yeah, because it ends up being about two months of carrying something, because the egg hatches after 10 days, and then the puggle is inside mom's pouch for several weeks. Like Katie said, they don't have nipples. They have a gland type thing called a milk patch where milk just comes out of it, like a part of their

body. And it is mammal milk. It's just not exactly the anatomy for dispensing it. We're used to. And yeah, and then the puggle is in the pouch for about seven weeks and only sort of gets kicked out because it starts developing spines. Yeah, and mom says no spines in the pouch. She's like, ow, what the hell? Get out! Yeah. And then the kid in a mom digs a burrow to like put this seven week old baby in. And also apparently they then leave their baby to fend for themselves at a relatively young age by mammal standards. Yeah. I mean, you know, they did do a good amount of stuff for like a few months and then they're just like, you know what, actually you're good now. You're all spiky. But it's a good kind of timeline though, right?

Because once they develop spines, then they are somewhat protected from predation. So you are getting at the stage where they might be able to fend for themselves without having to give birth to a ball of spikes, which would be really awful. Yes. Yeah, they let them go around seven months apparently, seven months old. So they're not totally an infant. At seven months, babies are just, you know, they're ready to start working. Send them to the mines. Like, let's see, you have spines, a tie, a briefcase. Okay, you're in ad sales.

Yeah, get out there. Yeah, all right. Yeah, another number to fit in is about 40 years of age. That's the lifespan of any kid in the wild, approximately. They can get closer to 50 in captivity. So a mom stopping around seven months on that long of a lifespan is almost reptilian to our minds. Like, these animals are such mammals and such other stuff too. It really is strange, but it's not like, I don't want people to get the impression

that these are the ancestors to all other mammals, right? Like these are not, it's not like we all, it's not like they are the in-between step between reptiles and then the rest of mammals and then we all descended from a kid knows and another monitoring. So that's not the case. They just represent like, we don't necessarily know

what the in-between step was for the rest of mammals, like what the common ancestor was. But we think that these ones might have been, they might have shared some qualities. Yeah, that's a great segue into the next takeaway too, because takeaway number three, based on new studies of ancient bones, we think echidnas and platypuses evolved from the same aquatic mammal near Antarctica. Ooh, that's wild because yeah, like we don't usually go back up.

Like once we like come out of the water and then we're like, actually no, this sucks, and we go back into the water. We don't usually go back out. Yeah, there was a lot of like back and forth water and land with an animal that led to echidnas and to platypuses. Nice. And platypuses are still semi-aquatic. Echidnas are mostly a land animal.

But it also turns out it's excellent at swimming, partly because of its heritage. Nice. It never forgets Michael Phelps was once its ancestor. And the big reason for monotremes seems to be plate tectonics and that monotremes were sort of separated from the rest of animals in a crucial and specific way. But like whatever god you believe in did their best to keep these weirdos separated from the rest of mammals. Yeah, I mean, Scientology God.

And so, uh... Yeah. He used a 1960s commercial airliner to separate the Boutotriebs and... Yeah, because the long set of movements of what became continents involves a very large supercontinent that we've named Gondwana.

And about 180 million years ago, that split in half. Gondwana ends up forming pretty much all the southern hemisphere lands. So like one half becomes Africa and South America after that's further subdivided. The other half continues breaking into pieces, creates Madagascar, India, and a lot of other things and then about 85 million years ago, Antarctica and Australia begin to split. They were together toward the last stage of all this. God damn it, Yoko Ono, what won't you ruin? Yoko dated Antarctica, she has big coats on and stuff. Yeah. And apparently also the climate was different. And so the combo Antarctica-Australia had like a polar forested region. It's not all the way at the South Pole, but it's below

what's now the Antarctic Circle. It's very cold and also a thriving ecosystem. Researchers from the Australian Museum and a few universities in 2022 announced that they thought they found the first mono dream, which was a tiny prehistoric mammal scientific name Tinalophos truslari. It lived on the combo Australia Antarctica with polar forests. Do we have like pictures of these guys? No, just like bone fragments that they've sussed out what it could be and it was also tiny. It only weighed about 40 grams just about what one slice of bread weighs. And it was tiny to be a tiny insectivore. It like dove into snow and moss to eat bugs.

Right. And snow and moss does have a lot of insects, but they're tiny insects. Yeah. And we also think this helps explain the electrosensitive parts of platypuses and echidnas. Oh yeah, this is exciting. Because they, like sharks, have electroreceptors. The way it works is every animal produces small electrical signals because of muscle movement, also brain activity, but mostly what they would be detecting would be muscle

movement. And so you have these very sensitive little glands when it detects sort of this change in this electrical balance, right? Like it triggers that nerve there and then they can like, because they have so many of these glands, they can determine the direction from where it's coming and then they can go in that direction and find the thing. And both platypuses and echidnas have electroreceptors. Platypuses have them in their billon, echidnas have electroreceptors, platypuses have them in their billon,

echidnas have them in their snoots. Yeah, yeah, like a lot of animals we associate with the sea. The theory is either from living in the sea or from tracking down bugs in snow, these earliest monotremes develop that same electrosensitive ability to like feel where prey are from the electricity

in their bodies and help them eat and live. That is almost unique with land animals. That's another amazing anatomy thing. It's really helpful for them because for platypuses, they're often looking around for worms and other little invertebrates in muddy, silty water where they can't see very well. And for a kitten as they're rooting around in the dirt for worms and stuff where they can't see very well. Yeah. It's so cool that the ability has been useful for at least 130 million years.

It's good to keep that up. I love it. It's like you can feel food with your face, which we can too, but usually that's when you just sort of rub it into your face and by that point you kind of already have the food and it's fine. But yeah, being able to sense your food moving around is very useful. Thinking of David Attenborough describing his own disgusting behaviors in the coolest voice.

Yeah. He's rubbing a sandwich against his face. He's like, this is how the echidna finds its food. The Attenborough acquires the hoagie. And then people are like, that's amazing. Nature's so cool. And he's just ruining the restaurant. And yeah, and then there's tons of debate still

with this whole evolutionary trajectory. There was a study published about it in April 2025. They examined one bone from an extinct animal scientific name Cryorictus cadbarii. It was found on a coast in southeastern Australia. It's the only bone we have from the entire species. And based on its weight and its microscopic features, we think this was a semi-aquatic burrowing monotreme. Cryorichtes cadbarii.

I bet it was cute. Yeah, we just figure it looks monotreme-y. We only have the one bone. Is it a cute bone though? I bet it's a cute bone. It is. It's the bone called the humerus. So.

Ah, funny. Our theory based on that is one of a couple things happened to make platypuses and echidnas separate. Either cryorectis continued to live mostly in water and became platypuses and then a branch of them moved onto land and became echidnas. Or cryorectis evolved into platypuses and then platypuses branched into echidnas. And apparently echidna fossils are much newer. Right. So basically we don't know. So basically we have no idea. It could be either way. It could happen this way or the complete opposite. Those are our two theories. Yeah, that's right.

The few things we do feel like we know are that echidnas have a bunch of aquatic life features that are surprising. And also the way continents moved explains why monotremes are only down in the Australia area there and not across the rest of the world. Theoretically, this branch of evolution could be all over, but they were initially just living in polar forests of the combo Antarctica, Australia. By the time they adapted to warmer climates and other climates, the other continents had moved away.

They're like, ah, get that thing away from us. Yeah. That's why they're in the Australia category only. Yes, yes. Like, I don't have monotremes on my street rooting through the trash, you know. Yeah. I mean, if only. Like, it is still, to me, it is wild that we even have any marsupials in the Americas.

Like we have possums, which is crazy. A miracle, they're great. Yeah, they're great. They are rooting in your trash, so that's fun. I want them to have it. Yeah, I know. Good for them. Like when a mom puts a note at a kids' school lunch,

I put a little note for the opossums, like, I love you, good, have a good day. Enjoy, love you. like, I love you, have a good day. Enjoy, love you. And yeah, Echidnas, they're amazing at burrowing. They have hind feet that face backwards. There's a theory that the backward facing feet might have originated as rudders for paddling through water.

The electroreception, the focus on eating insects, it all could fit aquatic life or be a reason they moved onto land because there were more bugs. And then echidnas do not need to swim and love to swim. They have the diving reflex where they can tell their body to conserve energy when submerged in water to maximize oxygen. They move very well through it. And my favorite quote about this is Australian Geographic, they interviewed Peggy Rissmiller, who's an echidna expert and works for a wildlife center.

And she says that people often think they are rescuing a swimming echidna. They're like, oh, that echidna is in the water, it needs help. And as soon as they pull it out of the water, it runs straight back into the water to be in the water it runs straight back into the water to be in the water Yeah, it's like someone's chilling out in it like a kiddie pool and then a rogue lifeguard comes in It's like I'll save you and yeah, smash this into the kiddie pool and you're like what? Yeah, and so especially Americans and like video game fans too We think these are sort of a hedgehog looking guy that just wants to be on land all the time.

And they are quietly an Antarctic swimmer sort of. It's amazing. Yeah. They also, the males on those like back legs, the males do have these spurs, which you've probably heard of in platypuses, are venomous. Like they're one of the rare venomous mammals. Echidnas don't have venom. Don't mention it to them. Don't tell the male echidnas, I know you don't have venom. It's considered really impolite. But yeah, they're not venomous. They're not harmful. But still,

don't pick them up. Just leave them alone. Let them swim around. Yeah. And apparently they can like, they still have the spurs sort of, and they can release a hormone or a communicative thing through it. But yeah, it's not venomous anymore. They let it go. Yeah. It's not, it's not dangerous. Yeah. Yeah. So like Katie said, be polite to your local echidna. Right. Let them swim. Right, let them swim. Remember that 9pm to 2am is Echidna free swim. But that's what I want to be at the pool to watch. And folks, that's so many numbers and takeaways already. We're going to take a quick break and then do a couple more takeaways about these amazing

echidna mono-dreams. I'm excited. We are back and we're back with takeaway number four. Short-beaked echidnas aerate until the soil across all of Australia. You know, I've never thought about that, but that makes complete sense because all the snoofaline, we've been talking about all the snoofaline and I've just never thought about the consequences of the Snooflin. A nickname for echidnas is the spiny anteater. And for reasons we just explored, they're not particularly related to anteaters or hedgehogs. They're from this other whole branch. But

they are constantly eating ants and termites and other bugs. They love to dig. And in the process, they support the entire ecosystem of all of Australia from snowy mountains to the hottest outback. That's fantastic. Yes. It's amazing. They're also super cute. I mean, like if you can do yourself a favor and look for, try to find photos of short

beaked dakinas with their faces directly at the camera. It's the funniest thing I've ever seen in my life. When me and Katie were emailing, I sent her the one picture I found where it just kind of looks like the Echidna is grinning. It's not really grinning, but I love it. I'm going to post it. It's my favorite. They're real cute. They're real, real cute. G replied with one that was even snootier, like in a good way. The snoot was like, hello!

Not snooty like a rich person. It's all the cuteness of a hedgehog with an even bigger snoot. Yeah, it's great. They also have a snoot with a long, sticky tongue, and they don't have teeth. They grind the bugs against a hard mouth bone, but they're amazing at eating bugs with that whole snootin system. And then the electroreceptors to see them. Ant eaters are similar. They have a long sticky tongue. They grind the ants through like sort of a hard throat area. So it's like a very similar mechanics, but they're not, they didn't descend from one another or anything like that. It's an

example of convergent evolution. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, then anteaters would be like, what are you, you're laying an egg? What? They're so different. Right. Ah, dang, I should try that. Oh yeah, maybe that's good. Yeah, key source about this digging and climate support is a 2016 study in the Journal of Experimental Biology. Also more writing about that from Cosmos magazine by Amy Middleton Because this 2016 study, you know, it's just one study but they tagged and tracked the activities of short-beaked echidnas the mainly Australian echidna and

Even as recently as 2016 researchers were saying I think they spend their day eating bugs But like what are the details we don't really know because we're not observing it that much and we need to tag it. And they discovered two amazing things. One is that echidnas spend about 12% of their day digging, like actively just digging. Which is a lot, like 12 is a lot if you think about if you did that in the day. You would be a digging animal if you did that. It sounds not bad, you know? Like, just digging, you know?

When you're not, if you're not digging for the man, if I had to dig for the man, then I think it would suck. But if I'm digging for me, M.E., and just digging all day, that seems kind of fun. Yeah. Hanging out with the worms, slurping them up when I find them like spaghetti's. We should seize the means of fun. Yeah. Hanging out with the worms, slurping them up when I find them like spaghetti. We should seize the means of digging.

We should dig for ourselves, not for... Not for the men. But yeah, their claws are really weird and shovel-like. They're very cute and then you zoom in on their claws and they're nasty. Yeah, the two observations, one is how much digging they do in a concentrated way. The other thing they found is that echidnas walk in a funny way. If you've seen videos of echidnas walking, it's a funny little shuffle, it's really cute. But the way their feet move when they do that disturbs the soil more than an average shuffle.

And so it sort of creates a light digging element to the way they walk. Wow. So it's sort of like when we talked about Buffalo that they will make little trenches with their hooves. These guys make little tiny trenches with their little claws. Exactly. That's exactly the thrilling feeling I had. I was like, echidnas are sort of a tiny Australian bison. Great. Great. Great. Exciting. Exciting. Very happy. And, yeah, and one term for what echidnas are doing with that is bioturbation. Ooh, that sounds cool.

An animal stirring up and tilling and aerating soil. You know, like when a kid digs to eat that ant, it's not bioturbation necessarily. But when it's just like doing stuff that adjusts soil, that's that. Right. Cool. I'm going to like, when I'm just walking around in the dirt and someone asks me what I'm doing, I'm saying bioturbating. You're welcome. Yeah. And using these two discoveries, these researchers did a possibly wrong estimate, but they did like a bunch of calculating. And they came up with a number of one adult echidna moves 204 cubic meters of dirt per year. One adult echidna two hundred and four cubic meters It seems like a lot of dirt. I don't really know how much dirt that is. I'm gonna be honest with you I'm bad at units. I'm trying trying to picture the amount of dirt. Is it a lot of dirt?

They tried to help they did a comparison where they said okay if 12 echidnas do that amount That's enough dirt to fill an empty Olympic swimming pool. That's a lot of dirt. Okay. I get it now. That is a lot of dirt. So one twelfth of the Olympic swimming pool. Yeah. Right. By 12 echidnas. Yeah. And they're little, like compared to an Olympic swimming pool, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, that's pretty good stuff.

Yeah. So they're bioturbating the dirt. And so does that have a pretty profound effect on the ecosystem? It does. It helps capture and retain leaf litter in soil. It traps organic matter below the surface of the soil. So then plants rooted in it, animals living in it can all eat. I like the idea that echidnas are basically making more stuff for the bugs they eat.

It's a nice situation all around. And then also echidnas make foraging pits actively to find bugs. They found that when an echidna does that, the soil in and around the pit absorbs double the amount of water afterwards. That it would have, it hadn't been disturbed. So they're kind of raising the water table maybe. Yeah, and also like helping plants get water from that soil. So like they're sort of greening their whole world by doing this.

They're like little gardeners. Did you ever watch or did you ever read Beatrix Potter books when you were a kid? Not really. I'm familiar with that. I read them. They're very cute. She had like a little hedgehog lady who is very industrious. And I think that there's a lot of love for hedgehogs in the UK because of all the good they do for gardens. But this is like the same thing we need. Cause I think it was Miss Tiggy Winkle

was the hedgehog one, which is, you know, definitely what female hedgehogs are generally named. And I just, I want an Australian version of Beatrix Potter with all the beautiful illustrations, but with these really weird versions of these animals. That would be really cool. Miss Echidna Tiggywinkle, look out for the love train. Oh boy.

Yeah, yeah, like it's just such an astounding animal for every animal around it. And the other thing with modern Australia It's just such an astounding animal for every animal around it. And the other thing with modern Australia is that as primarily white colonizers proceeded to build like European style cities in Australia, that expansion of human habitat has impacted a lot of Australian mammals. And apparently echidnas are the most common remaining mammal that does bioturbation. Because other animals like bandicoots and also bilbies are known for doing bioturbation type

stuff too as they look for bugs and move around. But their habitats and numbers were impacted a lot more than echidna numbers. So echidnas are like picking up the job in some ways. Also by those dang cane toads and also rabbits that don't compete with bilbies and bandicoots. But yeah, the echidnas remain no competition. Yeah, and going into this, I really would have presumed all echidnas are endangered because just many cool animals are, but the short-beaked ones in Australia and its adjacent little islands are doing pretty well. There's a lot of them. And so it's a surprisingly plentiful animal and it makes the whole ecosystem go. I mean, they are covered in spikes. They are covered in spikes. I also mentioned they do this in every Australian climate. That helps get into our last takeaway number five.

A echidnas do amazing and silly things to survive in various climates. Ooh, I'm excited to hear this. They're very good at... Do they wear little hats? Roll around in scarves? They're very good at cold or hot temperatures. One of the cold temperature things is that some subspecies just grow thicker coverings of fur and hair.

Yeah. So they're like fuzzier. Reasonable. That's really good. A subspecies in Tasmania, known for that in the mountains. Yeah. Aw. Yeah, the main source here is an excerpt from the book, Platypus Matters, the Extraordinary

Story of Australian Mammals by Cambridge Zoology Museum director Jack Ashby, also writing by a veterinary scientist Kate Dutton-Register who lectures at the University of Queensland. Echidnas with those sharp spines on their body, that also does a lot of temperature control. They mostly release heat through their belly, their limbs, and other not spiny, small areas. They're also amazing at forming a ball. Yeah. They will, at the slightest provocation,

apparently as little as a twig crunching near them in a way they don't expect, they will tuck their limbs and belly under the spines and then also fully ball up. They have a layer of muscle that when contracted works like a drawstring to pull their spines down over their limbs and heads. Like whoop. Yeah.

Goodbye. Yeah. No, they're, it's only, it's like only spines when you look at, when they're all curled up, uh, it's a very impressive ball of Spikes. It is the apparently other move they can do besides a ball is Jack Ashby says they can do what he compares to Jazz Hands with all four limbs in order to like make their whole body dig down and just be a dome of spikes in dirt. That's fantastic.

Yeah. That's really good. Jazz hands all over. I think I see why these guys have survived for so long because they can be ball of spike or jazz hands you into submission. Almost even more than the spines, they're super tough against temperatures and partly because their bodies can go into torpor and fully hibernation.

Yeah. And torpor is basically when your body system slow down. It's not quite hibernation, but your metabolism slows down, your body kind of slows down, but it's a lot easier to wake up from than hibernation. Like you can do it shorter periods of time. That's so cool. Yeah. Again, like loose understanding of mammals

and stuff I associate with like bears and many kidneys are doing it. Very exciting. Actually bears are, it's an interesting thing because bears are kind of considered like the most famous hibernators, but they're not actually major hibernators when you compare them to a lot of other animals like bats are really good at it.

A lot of smaller mammals are actually quite good at hibernation. The record takers for hibernations are things like bats that can just hibernate many, many, many months at a time and just almost completely stop their bodily processes. Bats should be famous for that. That's so cool. They should be. Yeah.

Why do we think bears are amazing at it and then bats are some sort of Dracula? Bats should be famous for hibernating. It's really not fair. I think it's bear lobbyists have gotten gotten the message out Big bear. Oh, no, and in political cartoons bears are the Soviets. So that's bad. They're in the government Oh, no, but they're also the markets. So Yeah, right Do they love capital do they hate capital come on Yeah, I have no way I've never figured out what a bullish market and a

bearish market is because it's like, oh a bearish market is bad but bulls are good and it's like, why? Huh? Just both dangerous animals. Yeah. What? And yeah, and echidnas among all mammals have a surprisingly low body temperature. Their body temp sits at around 89.6 Fahrenheit or 32 Celsius. And then when they go into torpor, they can plummet it all the way to 50 Fahrenheit or 10 Celsius. Wow. Yeah. That's got to help slow down their metabolism quite a lot.

Yeah. And so apparently in all climates of Australia, they will use that to get through tough winter, tough summer, anything. And then between that and being able to grow more hair and fur, they're very good at cold temperatures if they need to be. Amazing. What can't they do? And then the other thing, this might tie into snoot stuff you're thinking about, apparently in the hottest parts

of the outback, they will blow snot bubbles on their snoot for cooling. Yes, there we go. That's the gross thing that I was looking for. Snot bubbles. It's, you know, when you're trying to stay cool, anything goes. Vultures will poop on themselves

and that runny poop will help cool them down by pooping on their legs. Snout bubbles. Kangaroos lick their hands so they use saliva all over their arms to cool themselves down. So yeah, we got a lot of fluids that we can use like when you don't have a water bottle or one of those little

handheld fan you got saliva and poop and snot bubbles and all of those things can help you with evaporative cooling. It turns out yeah yeah the beaked nose of the echidna is covered in blood vessels a lot of potential for releasing heat and so they figured out that they can blow snot bubbles onto their own nose. The bubble bursts, then the wet moisture evaporates, and that evaporation cools their nose, which then cools their whole body. Nice. Echidnas have apparently been seen sheltering in hollow logs of the outback, while the temperature is 40 Celsius, which is 104 Fahrenheit.

I love that spines protect Echidna so well, but I also love that they're almost even more of a temperature super animal. Yeah. We'll link pictures from theconversation.com of them walking through snowy mountains, like the North in Game of Thrones character. And then also they hang out in

the hottest desert in the continent. It's really cool. And they're great at fondue parties. Marshmallow roasts. Yeah. They can carry it all. Kebabs. Yeah. Canapes. Because if you bring a porcupine, they're going to eject those quills. You can, spines do not eject. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's better. No.

And porcupine, yeah, it's interesting. That was a real animal effect to joke about fondue parties. Porcupines, they don't shoot them from a distance, but porcupines do. They'll come off. So like if you're a curious coyote and you stick your snoot at a porcupine, their quills can come off and they get stuck with these little tiny barbs in

your snout. And it's really uncomfortable and unpleasant. Hedgehogs, that does not happen. Echidnas, that doesn't happen. Echidnas are actually much more similar to hedgehogs in the sort of spine stuff. Like, and also hedgehogs will ball up and porcupines don't ball up. They go on like an offensive, like offensive like oh you want some of this And then they start backing their butt their spiny butt into your face. I Just love how many elements are so close to another animal and then I want echidnas to like

Speed date these animals they're like and the other animals like you're so like me and the kid is like hold on one sec Like lays a whole egg right there. Like, oh, okay. Right. I'm sure we're gonna talk about this more on the bonus, but just like with Sonic, we've got Sonic the Hedgehog. We have Knuckles the echidna. And then Tails the fox.

Why no porcupine? And they did Tails in between Sonic and Knuckles. Yeah, so what the hell? And then we don't even, we don't get Tendrix. There's so many spiky animals to get through, and I can't believe they whiffed it like that. Our next pitch after Disney is Sega. Sega? Hey, listen. Hey, listen. Why didn't you include weird penises in your game franchise?

Why was there no mention of cloacas even once? Perfect bonus transition. See ya, folks. Thanks. Folks, that is the main episode for this week. Welcome to the outro with fun features for you such as help remembering this episode with a run back through the big takeaways. Takeaway number one, a male echidna has a forefront penis, which is sort of like having a double reptile penis. Takeaway number two, echidnas are named after a mythological reptilian monster, partly because

of how female echidnas lay and carry eggs. Takeaway number three, based on new studies of ancient bones, we think echidnas and platypuses evolved from an aquatic mammal near Antarctica. Takeaway number four, short-beaked echidnas aerate and till the soil across all of Australia. Takeaway number five, echidnas do amazing and silly things to live in any climate. And then so many stats and numbers about the entire evolutionary history of echidnas, the amazing forensic science protecting Australian echidnas, and more. Those are the takeaways.

Also, I said that's the main episode because there is more secretly incredibly fascinating stuff available to you right now if you support this show at MaximumFun.org. Members are the reason this podcast exists, so members get a bonus show every week where we explore one obviously incredibly fascinating story related to the main episode. This week's bonus topic, as promised, is the entire series of business and technological decisions that led to Knuckles the Echidna in the Sonic the Hedgehog video games. Visit sifpod.fun for that bonus show, for a library of almost 21 dozen other secretly incredibly fascinating bonus

shows and a catalogue of all sorts of max Fun bonus shows. It's special audio, it's just for members. Thank you to everybody who backs this podcast operation. Additional fun things, check out our research sources on this episode's page at MaximumFun.org. Key sources this week include so much amazing digital science writing. Those outlets include PBS Nature, Australian Geographic, The Guardian, The Sydney Morning Herald, The New York Times. Also a lot of scientific resources online,

including the journal PNAS, the Journal of Evolutionary Biology, digital resources from the Australian Antarctic Program, in particular for the plate tectonics that separated Antarctica from Australia. And then one book excerpt, I did not read the entire book because it's mainly about platypuses, but there's an amazing excerpt about echidnas from Platypus Matters, the Extraordinary Story of Australian Mammals. That's by Cambridge Zoology Museum Director Jack Ashby. That page also features resources such as native-land.ca.

I'm using those to acknowledge that I recorded this in Lenapehoking, the traditional land of the Munsee Lenape people and the Wapinger people, as well as the Mohican people, Skatigok people, and others. Also KD taped this in the country of Italy. And I want to acknowledge that in my location, in many other locations in the Americas and elsewhere, in particular the entire range of E echidnas, Australia, New Guinea, other island territories in the southern Pacific Ocean, Native people are very much still here and there and elsewhere. That feels worth doing on each episode and join the free CIF Discord where we're sharing stories

and resources about Native people and life. There is a link in this episode's description to join the Discord. We're also talking about this episode on the Discord, and hey, would you like a tip on another episode? Because each week I'm finding is something randomly incredibly fascinating by running all the past episode numbers through a random number generator. This week's pick is episode 200. That's about the topic of helium. Fun fact there, the people who discovered helium as a specific element on the periodic

table were widely mocked as being wrong about how the sun works. So I recommend that episode. I also of course recommend my co-host Katie Golden's weekly podcast, Creature Feature, about animals and science and more. Katie is of course a massive source on this episode about an amazing animal, and if you enjoyed this at all, you will love Creature Feature, check it out. Our theme music is Unbroken, Unhaven by the Boodos Band.

Our show logo is by artist Burton Durand. Special thanks to Chris Souza for audio mastering on this episode. Special thanks to the Beacon music factory for taping support Extra extra special thanks go to our members and thank you to all our listeners I'm thrilled to say we will be back next week with more secretly incredibly fascinating So how about that? Talk to you then.