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Animals & Nature
echidna
monotreme
Also known as: Tachyglossidae, spiny anteater
Category:
Animals & Nature
- Also called:
- spiny anteater
echidna, (family Tachyglossidae), any of four species of peculiar egg-laying mammals from Australia, Tasmania, and New Guinea that eat and breathe through a bald tubular beak protruding from a dome-shaped body covered in spines. Echidnas have beady eyes and mere slits for ears, and at the end of their beaks are two small nares (or nostrils) and a tiny mouth. Electroreceptors in the skin of the beak may sense electrical signals produced by the muscles of invertebrate prey. Echidnas can be active day or night, probing along the ground slowly and deliberately as they search for prey, but they will ...(100 of 1332 words)