Most of us may know cenderawasih or cassowary when talking about Papua and West Papua. Yet, these eastern provinces in Indonesia have another endemic animal called monotremes or echidna. In fact, monotremes are the last egg-laying mammal that still survives today. If you haven’t known about this fascinating wildlife, keep reading.
Monotremes
Paleontologists’ experts from Australian Museum led a study that successfully explained the origin of two mysterious animals from the monotreme order that is echidna and platypus. These two fascinating animals are known as the last egg-laying mammals that still live up to the present. This entire time, monotremes have drawn many experts’ attention for their characteristics.
The uniqueness of this fauna is very obvious. It is because monotremes are the only mammals that breed by laying eggs. Just the same as other mammals, these captivating pals own mammary glands even if they don’t have teats. The milk is distributed through hairs that are located in the monotreme female’s belly.
Echidna
Most of us have probably heard about platypus or Ornithorhynchus anatinus. Platypus is an animal coming from the southern hemisphere and has a muzzle like a duck. However, different from platypus that has been widely exposed, echidna which originally came from Papua and West Papua, is less known. Echidna becomes one of the original animals of Indonesia.
It has a small body figure with coarse hair and sharp-pointed prickles all over their body. The size of adult echidna varies with a body length between 30-55 centimeters, a tail length between 7-9 centimeters, and body weight between 3-6 kilograms.
Adult male echidna generally weighs six kilograms while adult female echidna weighs around 4,5 kilograms. They are nocturnal animals, prefer a solitary life, and are active at night. Despite the fact that they own sharp-pointed outgrowth on their skin like a hedgehog, the echidna is not coming from the same family as a hedgehog.
Echidna’s Food
Echidna has strong and short arms with five sharp claws on each arm. Their long muzzles function as a sense of smell. These Papua and West Papua pals will sniff using the muzzles to detect the smell of food, keep them away from other predators, and recognize other echidnas.
Even though these fascinating creatures don’t have teeth, they have a long sticky tongue that helps them to catch termites and other insects. Since there are no teeth, they swallow prey alive.
Echidna’s Breeding
One of the most unique and captivating things about this creature is how they breed. Even though echidna belongs to mammals, this animal reproduces by laying eggs. Females echidna lays one soft-shelled and feathery egg, precisely twenty-two days after fertilization.
They later put the egg on the sac in their body. The egg will hatch within ten days. Baby echidna that just comes out of the eggshell later sucks milk from the pores of mammary glands and stays inside the sack of its mother until 45 to 55 days.
When young echidna starts to grow prickles, the mother digs a hole to put their baby. The female parent will come once every five days to breastfeed young echidna until they reach seventh months.
Echidna’s Species
So far, there are four species of echidna that are known. The four species are three species of long-beaked echidna (of five species) genus Zaglossus that still survive until now, and one species of short-beaked echidna of the genus Tachyglossus.
There is another echidna species Megalibgwilia. However, the genus with these two species is already extinct long ago. The physical character of this species can only be observed from the fossil profile found.
The spreading of this animal is in Papua and West Papua (also including Papua New Guinea) and Australia. Four species of echidna are part of the animal identified by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) as critically endangered species.
Echidna Among Locals in Papua and West Papua
In the land of Papua and West Papua, one species of echidna called Zaglossus bruijni is considered unique, mysterious, and endangered. As a matter of fact, echidna is not a common animal for people in Ormu Wari village, at the foot of the Cyclops.
People in this village see echidna as a sacred animal whose position in the forest is respected like a king. The author of Prasejarah Papua or Prehistoric Papua and a senior researcher of the Papua Archaeological Center, Hari Suroto, explained in his book that echidna was reckoned to have ancestors in the Jurassic era or the era of dinosaurs that were about 160 million years ago.
As monotremes, echidna looks like reptiles in terms of skull bones and eye structures. Hari also explained that this mammal has a brain cavity that is extraordinarily huge, complex, and has comparatively high intelligence.
We hope you find this information about echidna from Papua and West Papua useful. Besides this stunning species, other Papua and West Papua mammals also active at night are marsupial mole, tree kangaroo, wallaby, cuscus, and quoll.
