Male fertility 'precariously close' to climate change extinction limits It’s these animals we used for the study, but we were also able to observe a tame echidna. Unfortunately, many of these echidnas are hurt beyond recovery and have to be euthanised. Our research is a collaborative project involving scientists from the University of Melbourne, University of Queensland and Monash University, but most crucial to the work has been the Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary on the Gold Coast, which has established a small breeding colony of echidnas.Īround 50 injured echidnas are brought to the wildlife hospital at Currumbin every year, the majority from road accidents. The echidnas penis is stored internally when not in use. But for the first time we have untangled what is going on anatomically, with the results now published in the journal Sexual Development. Only two of these four glans ever become functional during erection and which glans are functional appears to alternate between subsequent erections.Įxactly how echidnas do this has always been a mystery. Unlike other mammals, the monotreme penis is used only for mating and never carries urine.Īmong echidna females, in addition to laying an egg, the pouch where they nurse their young is only a temporary structure and develops by the thickening of the lateral margins around the abdominal region that surrounds the mammary glands.īut perhaps what is most bizarre about the echidna penis is that it has four heads, which are actually rosette-like glans at the end. Delving into the DNA of our iconic platypus and echidna In most other species, sperm swim individually and it’s every sperm for themselves. Monotremes are the only egg-laying mammals, but they also have a number of other unique reproductive characteristics.įor the males, their testes never descend, they have no scrotum, when not in use, their penis is stored internally and their ejaculate contains bundles of up to 100 sperm that swim cooperatively until they reach the egg. Picture: Getty ImagesĮven today, they remain the least understood group of living mammals. The platypus and the four species of echidna make up living monotremes. Eventually, a new group of mammals had to be created to account for the platypus and its fellow monotremes – the four different species of echidnas. When British scientists in the 18th Century first saw a platypus they dismissed it as a hoax. During mating, two of the four penis heads shut down and the other two are used to ejaculate sperm.Monotremes are among the world’s strangest animals, mixing mammalian and reptilian characteristics in the one creature.Within two months of birth, they are already developing fur and spines – that’s when mum evicts them from the pouch.The baby echidna, or puggle, is born hairless and spineless. The female echidna lays a single leathery egg in her pouch, then carries it for about ten days before it hatches.“Echidnas don’t vocalise in a frequency we can hear,” she says. “You see them sort of even avoiding each other, so how do they know where another echidna is? Is there some kind of inaudible communication that’s going out? I’d really like to know more about that.” We know lots of interesting facts about them, but she is now keen to test some theories she has about how they communicate. Dr Peggy Rissmiller has been researching these loveable creatures since 1988.
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