3. Appearance
• echidna, small animal with course hair and
spines (needles)
• short legs with large claws
• small mouth with no teeth and a large
snout with a sticky tongue to catch ants
4. Habitat
• echidnas live in Australia in a range of
habitats including highlands, forests and
deserts
• some shelter they’ve been spotted in are
rocks, fallen wood, caves and sometimes
under bushes
5. Life Cycle
• starts of as an egg, even though it is a mammal, echidnas are
one of the only egg-laying mammals, the egg hatches in its
mother’s pouch for 10 days
• when it hatches it is jellybean sized and it drinks its mother’s milk
• when its spines start to grow it moves into a burrow and its
mother feeds it in their for 6-7 months
• after that, the echidna fends for itself
• An echidna can live up to 16 years in the wild
6. Diet of Echidna
• the echidna feeds mostly on ants and
termites, occasionally feeds on beetles
and on other insects
7. Predators
• eagles, dingoes, and tasmanian devils are
some of the echidnas predators
• the echidnas burrow into the ground when
chased, if the echidna does not have time
it curls into a ball and its spines protect
them
8. How Echidnas Contribute to the
Diversity of Life
• echidnas contribute to the diversity of life
with the food chain
• echidnas provide food to its predators, and
without the echidna their predators would
have less food and less variety
• by eating insects, echidnas prevent
Australia from having a humongous
amount of termites and ants
9. How Humans Impact the Habitat of
the Echidna
• humans impact the habitat of the echidna
mostly with one way and that way is floods
• the floods usually happen when humans
change their natural watercourses
because of their activities
• echidnas can swim, but can’t survive
floods
10. What Humans can do to help the
Echidnas Survive
• some things that can be done to echidnas
survive are…
• humans can be more careful with their water so
they don’t flood the echidnas home
• humans can keep their pets away from echidnas
so they don’t kill them
• humans can not interfere with echidnas and let
them live alone in the wild
11. Interesting Fact
• Ever heard of sonic? If you have, you probably know
he is hedgehog, but did you know his rival Knuckles
is an echidna? Most people think he’s a porcupine
because of his spines, but echidnas have spines too
and Sony (the creators of Sonic) say that he is an
echidna.
• there are two main types of echidna: sort beaked
echidna and long beaked echidna
• echidnas are one of the two egg-laying mammals,
platypuses are the other
• echidnas can lift twice its weight
• a baby echidna is called a puggle
12. How Echidnas got its Name
• the echidna got its name from the
Mother of all Monsters, Echidna
• Echidna was from Greek mythology
and was half woman half snake and
gave birth to almost all the monsters in
Greek mythology. I still do not know
why the Australians named the echidna
after her though.
