[HN Gopher] The Echidna Is Australia's Most Delightfully Differe... ___________________________________________________________________ The Echidna Is Australia's Most Delightfully Different Mammal Author : sohkamyung Score : 65 points Date : 2022-08-05 05:41 UTC (1 days ago) (HTM) web link (www.atlasobscura.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.atlasobscura.com) | oblak wrote: | I just realized I hadn't heard/read that word - echidna - in | about three decades. The downfalls of not watching TV I suppose. | Looking at the pictures, they seem to be cute little critters. | Wonder if it would be possible to befriend one | bitwize wrote: | > The evolutionary marvel mates in love trains, can swim in the | ocean, and even uses jazz hands as a defensive tactic. | | This strapline is bound to generate some... interesting Knuckles | fan art. | | I had the good fortune of seeing a female echidna, licking honey | from a bowl held by a caretaker, at the Australia Zoo shortly | before departing. They are truly fascinating critters, cute in | their own way. | TheSpiceIsLife wrote: | Here in Tasmania I've stopped a few times to shoo them off the | road, most effective way to date has been to wrap a towel around | one and drag it. They don't seem to enjoy that very much at all, | but I figure they enjoy being driven over less. | Humphrey wrote: | Was once [ignorantly] trying to help encourage an echidna to get | off a busy road next to my house, but it burrowed down into the | cement curb gutter. It managed to use its quills to hold onto the | cement, and there was not a chance of moving it. I couldn't | believe how strongly it could hold onto what I thought as smooth | cement. | tus666 wrote: | Wtf is this doing on obscura? You are acting like they are | extinct or extremely rare. They are very common in certain areas. | They are fun to flip over. | actionfromafar wrote: | Please don't do that. They don't like it. | yawnxyz wrote: | I love those little dudes! | | I just moved to Sydney and saw them at the Taronga zoo... and I'd | never even heard of one before. Strangest little creatures. | paranoidrobot wrote: | If you've just moved to Sydney, then there's a reasonably good | chance of spotting them if you live outside of the city itself | and walk around near bushland. | | The /r/sydney subreddit is regularly full of reports of people | spotting them when the Echidnas are more active during mating | season. | telman17 wrote: | I love the echidna. I did a science project on it in 5th grade. | My mom helped me do a clay sculpture of it and I remember having | a blast putting in all the "spines". Was also an avid og sonic | the hedgehog player so it seemed like these little guys were | everywhere during that time. | salty_biscuits wrote: | They are super cute and I always get a kick whenever I see one on | a walk. No idea why they are named after "the mother of | monsters", early Europeans must have been on another planet | | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Echidna_(mythology) | markdown wrote: | Please don't kid these creatures. They're harmless. | salty_biscuits wrote: | "Get a kick" = "enjoy", not a literal kick. | markdown wrote: | I forget I'm not on Reddit, where my silliness would have | gotten upvotes. | salty_biscuits wrote: | Haha, yes I thought so but my experience on hn is any | humor gets misread so just felt like I needed to clarify | in case anyone thought I was a monster who goes around | punting monotremes. | hunglee2 wrote: | they are quite common in Australia, saw a few earlier this year, | by the roadside just rooting around in the grass. Don't seem to | be too scared of humans either, I couldn't easily stooped and | picked it up. Nice lads | elromulous wrote: | Thank you Sega for introducing me to the Echidna (sonic & | knuckles) | brian_herman wrote: | Famous echidna in gaming: | https://sonic.fandom.com/wiki/Knuckles_the_Echidna | dymk wrote: | Fun science fact: the echidnas' internal monologue is in the | voice of Idris Elba. | UIUC_06 wrote: | Great article. Australia has the best animals. Even a mammal with | an extremely painful venomous sting (the platypus), a pain that's | not relieved by morphine. | | And the Tasmanian Devil, one of the nastiest looking little | creatures on 4 legs I've ever seen. | | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platypus_venom | TheSpiceIsLife wrote: | Nasty? No! | | They're adorable. | | I advocate for their domestication to anyone who'll listen. | | They're known to be very tame and friendly with in a short | duration of repeated human closeness. | | Sure, an adult Devil could bite your hand off, but so can a | dog, and Devils tend to prefer already dead things. | yarg wrote: | Poor little fighty bastards: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devil_facial_tumour_disease. | | Human efforts at eradication left them with such low genetic | diversity that contagious cancer became a thing. | | https://www.aussieark.org.au/tasmanian-devil/ | AlbertCory wrote: | OK, well, each to his own. Everything in Oz can kill you | anyway :) | | My "contact" was limited to watching one run around and | around his cage at some zoo or animal preserve. He certainly | looked plenty pissed off. | yarg wrote: | > run around and around his cage | | > He certainly looked plenty pissed off. | | Wouldn't you? | jjtheblunt wrote: | are you talking about domesticating a Tasmanian Devil or a | Platypus? | mc32 wrote: | It seems clear they're advocating for 'devils. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-08-06 23:00 UTC)