Echidnas Help In Research

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31660, 22 April 1968, Page 2

Echidnas Help In Research

(N Z P A -Reuter—Copyright) SEATTLE (Washington). Wilbur, Xanthippe, Yorke and Zog are four echidnas from Tasmania who may help scientists find out why some unborn babies have respiratory difficulties.

W, X, V and Z, which re- , semble hedgehogs, are I among the lowest orders of mammals because, like the duckbill platypus, they lay eggs. But they have the amazing ability to breath almost any kind of atmosphere, even that with high carbon-dioxide content In their native habitat they forage on ants. At the Uni versity of Washington Medical School, they are thriving on a diet of powdered baby food and eggs. They have not slurped an ant since Dr Julian Parer brought them to Seattle. Dr Parer, an Australian, is a doctor of veterinary medicine and an instructor on obstetrics and gynaecology. His concern at the moment is to determine why an echidna can live in an environment of low oxygen or high carbondioxide content. If he and fellow scientists can learn the answer to that question they may be able to find the way to save human foetuses which have breathing difficulties Echidnas have a breathing and blood circulatory rate of about that of a rabbit. To demonstrate their ability to breath gasses, Dr Parer put Wilbur into his box and the prickly little fellow quickly burrowed down through the cloth and poked his long nose into a hole near the bottom Dr Parer then put a plastic

I tube into the hole and pumped I in various mixtures of gas and air. Wilbur kept his nose to the hole, content to sniff whatever mixture Dr Parer cared to give him. “They are very good lab animals.” Dr Parer said. “They don’t make a sound.”