Macquarie Hatches First University-Born Echidna Puggle
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- Macquarie University has successfully bred an echidna puggle — the first such birth and rearing at any university worldwide — with mother echidna Kootear delivering the egg into her pouch after fasting for roughly 10 days in early August.
- Oliver Griffith and his team removed the puggle from Kootear's pouch this week for its first weigh-in, with New Scientist invited to witness; the puggle weighed 36 grams and was beginning to show echidna features including beak and feet, though it still lacked spines and fur.
- When first discovered inside Kootear's pouch, the puggle was 'jelly-bean-sized' and had hatched only a couple of days earlier; by the next check seven days later, it had grown 'a crazy amount,' per Griffith.
- The university holds nine captive echidnas — five females and four males — and Griffith said the program is designed as 'a career's worth of research,' with the puggle potentially outliving him given that echidnas can live more than 50 years in captivity.
- Short-beaked echidnas have proved 'extremely difficult to breed in captivity,' and despite numerous attempts no dedicated research colony had ever been successfully established before this birth, though several zoos and wildlife sanctuaries have bred the species.
- Griffith's team plans to compare echidna eggshell proteins with reptile eggshell proteins to determine whether the two share a common evolutionary origin or evolved independently — a question that could clarify when mammals and reptiles diverged.
Why it matters: Short-beaked echidnas are notoriously difficult to breed in captivity, and the article notes no dedicated research colony has ever been successfully established. With nine echidnas now in captivity at Macquarie — five females and four males — Griffith's long-term program finally has a breeding breakthrough, and the team plans to compare echidna and reptile eggshell proteins to test the long-debated question of whether mammalian and reptilian eggs share a common evolutionary origin.
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