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Spiny Anteater — printable fact sheet
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Spiny Anteater
Tachyglossus aculeatus
The echidna is one of only five surviving monotremes — mammals that lay eggs. It has no nipples, so it feeds its young by sweating milk from patches of skin, which the hatchling, called a puggle, laps from the fur. Its beak is studded with electroreceptors that detect the faint …
Did you know?
- Unlike most mammals, spiny anteaters have no nipples; they secrete milk through specialized patches on their skin for their young to lap up.
- It lays eggs, yet feeds its young milk — sweated from patches of skin, because it has no nipples. Its beak detects the electrical fields of insects moving in wet soil, a sense almost no land mammal has. It runs one of the lowest body temperatures of any mammal, and has been recorded sleeping through bushfires underground. The male's penis has four heads, used two at a time.
What I learned
Draw the spiny anteater
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