The name of these animals comes from Greek mythology. According to myth, Echidna was a monster with the head and arms of a human woman and a snake tail where her legs would be. She was called the "Mother of Monsters" because of the many children she had with her husband, Typhon, including Cerberus, the Chimera, and the Hydra. As for why this beast inspired the name of a little ant-eating mammal, it is thought that explorers compared the mixture of mammalian and reptilian features of the animal to the human-snake hybrid nature of the monster.
The most interesting thing about these animals is how, as monotremes, they appear to have traits from other animals. They have spines like a hedgehog, a thin "beak" like a kiwi bird, a long tongue for eating bugs like an anteater, they lay eggs like a bird or reptile, and they keep their babies safe in a pouch like a marsupial. Now, let's take a look at each of these features and see what they do.
The hedgehog-like spines of an echidna help protect it from predators like dingoes. They can also use their spines to lodge them into the ground as they dig down to hide.
Their kiwi-like "beak" and anteater-like tongue helps them in finding food. Their favourite foods are ants and termites, so their long, thin snout and long, sticky tongue are perfect for such a meal. Their nose also has the ability to sense electric fields that are emitted by their prey.
Like the platypus, echidnas are monotremes, meaning, unlike most mammals they lay eggs. Said eggs are small and have leathery shells. A female echidna lays one egg at a time. The egg is then kept in a pouch on the female's belly, which only appears for this purpose and disappears after the baby leaves. The egg takes 10 days to hatch, after which the baby, nicknamed a "puggle", stays in the pouch to feed on milk for approximately 3 months. Once the baby's spines start growing in, it leaves the pouch and stays in a hole in the ground for a few more months. After that, the echidna becomes an adult and is ready to take on the world!
