Baby Echidna is So Cute!

Posted by Alex in Animal on October 23, 2008 at 4:23 pm


Here’s the ugliest/cutest baby you’ll see today: a baby echidna!

Echidnas and the Platypus are the only egg-laying mammals, known as monotremes. The female lays a single soft-shelled, leathery egg twenty-two days after mating and deposits it directly into her pouch. Hatching takes ten days; the young echidna, called a puggle, then sucks milk from the pores of the two milk patches (monotremes have no nipples) and remains in the pouch for forty-five to fifty-five days, at which time it starts to develop spines. The mother digs a nursery burrow and deposits the puggle, returning every five days to suckle it until it is weaned at seven months.

Cellar Image of the Day has more pics: Link


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11 comments to "Baby Echidna is So Cute!"

  1. PAgent
    October 23rd, 2008 at 5:26 pm

    Am I the only person in the world who thinks these things look like raw skinless chicken thighs?

  2. Johnny Cat
    October 23rd, 2008 at 6:00 pm

    Looks like a baby vacuum cleaner beast from Yellow Submarine! ;)

  3. Tempscire
    October 23rd, 2008 at 6:29 pm

    No baby marsupial is ever cute. (Do echidnas also count as marsupials? They do the same baby-stays-in-pouch thing until it's no longer gummi bear-like.)

  4. SD1
    October 23rd, 2008 at 7:31 pm

    Talk about a survival-adaptive-evolution organism. If there is such a term.

  5. Ali S.
    October 23rd, 2008 at 7:42 pm

    To me it looks like a big fist sized gummi bear.

  6. SenorMysterioso
    October 24th, 2008 at 1:55 am

    fascinating things them monotremes

  7. Pol x
    October 24th, 2008 at 3:59 am

    monotreme,. meaning one hole IIRC, they have a cloaca for urination defecation and birth.

    Just as well they are in an egg when born.

    yik.

  8. just a guy
    October 24th, 2008 at 9:38 am

    it's looks like a Silent Hill enemy or somesuch! Gah.

  9. Thomas
    October 24th, 2008 at 11:11 am

    Reminds me of that pink thing from an early episode of Star Trek: TNG that would get on your neck and control your mind. Anybody remember that?

  10. EEM
    October 24th, 2008 at 3:39 pm

    gross

  11. edc
    October 25th, 2008 at 12:44 pm

    I look like that after a night on the sauce.


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