Short-Beaked Echidna

Alongside the platypus, the short-beaked echidna is one of the world’s few monotremes — mammals that lay eggs. A single soft-shelled egg is incubated in a pouch on the mother’s belly, and the bean-sized hatchling, called a puggle, stays there until its spines grow in. When danger appears, the echidna digs straight down into the soil and wedges itself in place, spines outward.

Its snout is a sensitive probe tipped with an electroreceptor array that detects the tiny muscle twitches of ants and termites underground. With no teeth at all, it breaks up its catch on spines at the back of its tongue.