PRIMITIVE MAMMAL HATCHES YOUNG

Manawatu Times, Volume LIV, Issue 6804, 7 January 1929, Page 8

PRIMITIVE MAMMAL HATCHES YOUNG

ANTEATER FROM NEW GUINEA. There are many creatures at the London Zoo which the ordinary visitor does not see unless he possesses an exceptionally inquiring turn of .mind, says the Morning Post. One of these animals is the echidna, or spiny anteater, from New Guinea, which is one of tho most grotesque beasts in the collection, and lives in a special box in the rodent house. It is a nocturnal in habit, and therefore can only be seen in the daytime by applying to the keeper. This creature belongs to a curious primitive group of mammals which hatch their young from eggs and yet suckle them in the . ordinary war. Imagine a porcupine writh a beak, with quills only an inch in length, with mole-like claws instead of feet, and you have a fair picture of the echidna. It sleeps rolled up like a hedgehog, and is an ugly customer to pick up without the thickest of gloves. After dusk, this we-ird creature may bo seen, by the aid of am electric torch, shambling about in the run outside its box or taking its food from a large shallow tray. The echidna is a burrowing animal, and can rapidly dig itself into tho ground with its powerful claws. It feeds on ants which it licks up with its long, flexible tongue. During this process, it naturaliv takes up a large amount of earth and other rough material, together with the ants, and this extra and somewhat indigestible packing would seem to form a part and parcel of its diet, for the specimen at the zoo will not cat its daily, or rather nightly, meal until it has added to it a largo quantity of the peat litter which forms its bedding.

Although ,in the wild state it feeds on ants, the zoo specimen has nevt:r had the chance of catching any in all the 15 years it has been there, except on two occasions when it escaped from the rodent house and was later rccovcd from a neighbouring shrubbery. Tho food substitute which the echidna apd all other antcaters at the zoo are now fed u-pon consists of a mixtui'e of condensed milk, minced meat, hardboiled eggs, and fried ant’s eggs. The echidna has only one relation, the duck-billed platypus. This creature which is now nearly extinct, and is protected by law in Australia and Tflkmania shares its egg-laying propensities and is even more curious to look on and remarkable in its habits thou the spiny anteater itself. Many attempts have been made to introduce the duck-billed platypus into this and /ther countries, but up to the present

all have failed with the exception of a single specimen which once lived for three weeks in tho New York Zoo. The echidna, too, is regarded as being hard to keep in captivity and the present specimen which has lived in the gardens since 1913, has set up a surprising record.