Ultimate survivor

TAHLIA PERRY SHOWS me an extraordinary photograph of an echidna, which is testament to the remarkable resilience of these animals in the face of bushfires. The picture, submitted to her citizen science project EchidnaCSI, shows an animal with its spines severed halfway along their length, giving it the appearance of having been trimmed into a flat-top hairstyle.

“The echidna had this weird thing, where it looked like its spines had been cut, but actually it had been caught in a controlled burn,” explains Tahlia, who is based at the University of Adelaide. “It was a striking image…and our social media went pretty wild.” Often, rather than attempt to outrun a fire, echidnas simply burrow into the ground, or conceal themselves inside fallen logs. One of their many unique talents is that they can dig straight down on the spot, disappearing into the dirt in as little as a minute. They then enter a temporary hibernation-like state to conserve energy, and wait for the danger to pass. This ‘torpor’, which is also employed by echidnas in some cooler regions, sees them slow their heart rate, metabolism and temperature–breathing in and out as few as three times a minute. On rare occasions they may stay like this for weeks following a fire, only emerging once their insect prey has returned to the environment.

But the echidna in the image, snapped by citizen scientist Georgina Swan following a hazard reduction burn in bush in northern Sydney, clearly hadn’t dug down far enough, and its spines were melted off. Tahlia explains that this might not have been painful for the animal, because the spines, being modified hairs, are not living tissue. Although that particular image was taken in August last year, just before the catastrophic Black Summer fire season got underway, pictures and reports emerged early this year of echidnas elsewhere with melted spines. In fact, along with wombats, which also take refuge underground, echidnas were some of