Alex Hernandes, age 12, of Fontana, California, for his question:
How does the spiny anteater bear her young?
This little mother is a native of Australia, home of most of the world's marvelous marsupial animals. So we might expect her to carry her babes in a pouch, perhaps like the one that a mother kangaroo has on her tummy. Although she is not a member of the marsupial family, she does indeed carry her young in a built in pouch.
We tend to assume that birds and snakes lay eggs and think of the mammals as a separate group because they bear live young. True, ail the birds do hatch from eggs, but after that the rule relaxes a little. Some of the snakes bear their young alive, and a very few of the mammals lay eggs. One of them is the unbelievable duckbill platypus. Another is the spiny anteater, alias the echidna.. Both of these mammals are natives of Australia where, perhaps, their oddities go unnoticed amidst the assort¬ment of weird and wonderful wild life.
Animals are not classified as mammals on the basis of their live bearing habits. The key factor is the feeding of the young. All mammal babies are fed on mother's milk. The term "mammal" is coined from the mother's built in faucets that supply the baby formula. The spiny anteater has such faucets and her baby is fed on mother's milk. This factor qualifies her as a mammal even though she does lay eggs.
Australian natives call Mrs. Echidna a porcupine because her back and sides are covered with bristling spikes. She is a squat, rather chubby little animal about 20 inches long. Her snip of a tail is not worth mentioning, but her nose is a long sort of beak. Actually it is a sensitive tube for probing out ants and termites. Her mouth is a small hole at the tip and her long, sticky tongue is kept inside, always ready to whiplash out to gather a quota of scurrying bugs. Her dark, brownish gray hair covers her underside and mingles with the spikes on her back and sides. Her feet are sturdy shovels with strong claws for digging.
As a rule, the little mother lays only one egg at a time, usually in May. She uses her beak to get it into a kangaroo type pouch on her abdomen. This cozy pocket acts as a nest and an incubator. The egg hatches in a few days. Junior looks like a small copy of his mother, but the spikes mixed with his hair are still soft. His feeding faucet is right there inside the pouch but it is not like the little buttons worn by most mammals. It is merely a special patch of skin with large pores through which the baby sucks his formula. Junior does not repose in Mama's pouch very long for a very good reason. His soft spines soon begin to harden and the prickles irri¬tate the living lining of his mother's pouch. She removes him and places him in a safe hiding place, perhaps under a stone or fallen log. Soon he is ready to accompany her on her nightly forages for ants and termites. Barring accidents, he can expect to enjoy his ant eating life for 15 years.
The spiny anteater is a very shy animal. When scared he uses his shovel paws to burrow down so fast that he seems to be sinking into the ground. Strange to say, the shy little fellow with such odd ways makes a splendid pet. Of course, he sleeps through the day and enjoys company only at night. But he seems fond of people and soon becomes very friendly. After a period of this friendship, he loses his natural shyness toward human beings.