Maggie Koerth-Baker is the science editor at BoingBoing.net. She writes a monthly column for The New York Times Magazine and is the author of Before the Lights Go Out, a book about electricity, infrastructure, and the future of energy. You can find Maggie on Twitter and Facebook.

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  • http://celesteagnes.blogspot.com/ Sekino

    They definitely have a tardigrade-like cuteness.

    • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_OAUXAA362EXWLYVMPJOKLFB5JQ Incipient Madness

      Tardigrades are not cute, they are frightening. You wanna terraform a planet? Keep bombing it with tardigrades, they will find a way. 

      • http://www.zazzle.com/InfinitudeTortoises* An Infinitude of Tortoises

        And perhaps they did….

  • OldBrownSquirrel

    Little dairy Hoovers!

  • OldBrownSquirrel

    Y’know, what I’d really like to see is video of one of those things *hatching*.

  • John Radi

    Sorry, but echidnas are enough to convince me to figure out how to filter out future echidna related posts..  Isn’t there a chrome plugin for that?

  • that_music

    uhhh… that “fifth leg” you can see in this video is actually its tail…
    From the NatGeo article you linked to: “A male’s echidna’s crown jewels are all stored inside his body so from the outside Grumpy looks like a lady.”

    @boingboing-30649c91c86ba5388e401109501718ff:disqus http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXEC1Qx4cJg this is probably as close as you’re going to get, since the egg actually hatches *inside* the mothers pouch.

  • hughstimson

    Wait. At the end. Why does she put it in a box? Do they store them in boxes?

    There are boxes here. Are there echidna babies in any of these boxes? I will check.

    • Dan Gordon

      It’s an Esky, which I believe is called a cooler on the eastern side of the Pacific

      • hughstimson

        That explains why I didn’t find any echidna babies.

      • http://www.ikaink.net Itsumishi

        Sure is mate.

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_OAUXAA362EXWLYVMPJOKLFB5JQ Incipient Madness

    How is it that mama echidna can leave them so long without milk? Similarly undeveloped baby kittehs would die if left so long. I understand that the Virginia Opossum has a slow metabolism, which is why when my cat was in a fight with a possum the possum didn’t back down. My cat was smashing the crap out of the possum and the possum just stood there gaping his hissing mouth with 80 teeth. If the possum had fought back I am sure my cat would have gone for a throat bite or a belly rake, but the possum just stood there. Confused the shit out of my cat. I whacked the possum five times with a broom before it left.

    Do echidnas have even a lower metabolic rate?

    • http://twitter.com/beep54orama B E Pratt

       I live at a place that has god nose how many possums (surely under 10 at this area) and  something like 7-10 feral cats. The cats, wisely I think, just give the possums the evil eye and let them go on about their business. Too smart to waste their energy on them.

    • http://twitter.com/cjporkchop cjporkchop

       I don’t have a source, but I seem to recall reading/hearing somewhere that animals with very rich/thick milk don’t have to feed their young as often as animals with more watery milk. Humans and kittens fall into the watery end of the spectrum.

  • http://www.geekforce.com Hugh Johnson

    Echidna in a cooler!