Thirsty Sex-Crazed Echidnas
Drowning in bathtubs and their own primitive hormones, Monotremes play follow-the-leader in a love-train where persistence pays off.
Looking out my lounge room window, I swear. Grabbing the tablet, I race outside to film an echidna. It’s waddling to a terracotta pot, drinking water from its saucer. One, then 2, then 3, then 4 echidnas start pacing around my patio. They drink, they come to me; it gets intimate.

Most animals get sexy in the spring; the birds, bees and butterflies do. There are exceptions. My Peacocks get it on with tail shimmies over summer, and winter is echidna breeding season.
In July and August, Short-beaked Echidna boys pick up the scent of an E girl with sensitive sensors on the end of their snout. Once the male hormones kick in, they’ll follow any female secreting pheromones for the next six weeks. Some love-trains have five hopeful spiky guys following the perfumed lady about, nose to tail.
Hyped up on the possibility of making a Puggle, the echidnas I saw were so single-mindedly sex-crazed, they didn’t realise I was human, or even care I was there. They were also thirsty. Stuck in the worst drought for 100 years, they came to my place for drinks because it was the only water around for miles.
The most persistent echidna stalker always gets the girl. Carefully though, that lucky boy has to dig a mating trench so he doesn’t get spiked. (Maybe the E girl still feels a little prickly, but you wouldn’t think so after a month of foreplay, where hot spiny males fought over prime position behind her.)
Ouch.
Echidnas are Monotremes, one of only three species left in the world; they’re an ancient carryover from reptiles. Back in dinosaur times, before enduring mammals like rodents evolved, there were stacks of Monotremes.
A weird animal crossover, echidnas have no teeth or milk teats or whiskers like mammals. Their spines are sharp and reptilian; think miniature Stegosaurus. Adults are 45cm long; with an ant-gobbling tongue that measures 18cm and flickers like a lizard.
Just as birds do, echidnas lay an egg from a single hole that everything comes out of. Like dinosaurs, E’s are small-brained but strong enough to lift twice their body weight. They don’t just look primeval; the girls have a temporary pouch, while the boys have heel-spurs on their hind legs.
Lying down on the pavers, I’m surrounded by three big boy E’s. Spike 2 touches my hand with his beak. The brown snout has the dexterity of a finger but is as soft as a cuddly toy. Stunned, I hold my breath.
Spike 3 does his own impersonation of John Wayne’s walk; coming to me for a scratch and sniff. When his spines brush my arm; they feel like plastic. Echidnas smell of earth; as pungent as fresh compost.
It’s a benign attack of prehistoric miniature dinos.

Monotremes survived so long because nothing else liked eating ants, termites or their larvae. They totally cornered the market with over 1300 ant species and 350 termite species in Australia.
As I film an echidna drinking, another one slurps from an old sunken bathtub. Spike 1 plops in. I wriggle over on my belly, watching its creepy tongue flick in and out of the water. It makes a nose dive. Echidnas can swim to save themselves, but they can’t climb up backwards from a slippery tub. I start screaming.
“Help; an echidna fell in the bath and it can’t get out. Quick, it’s drowning; I don’t know what to do.”
My husband is there in seconds. I stay quiet, still filming. The broom he holds bends in the middle. Lifting a 7-kilo ant eater from a fishpond isn’t easy.
Spike 1 is up, up and out. Dripping water, he recovers and toddles away.

“Thanks, darlin’,” I say, grateful.
As if I was speaking directly to Spike Number 1, he pauses to listen before striding on. It’s my favourite moment. A minute later this waterlogged echidna takes refuge with Lady Spiny and the two other Spikes.
My screams must have been deafening; all the echidnas are huddling beneath a yellow-flowered shrub. Four spiny balls dig down in the dirt. I take more photos. I watch them breathe. It makes me smile when one sticks their beak out to see if I’m still hanging around.

As soon as I step inside for a drink, one of the echidna boys leaves the pack. It might have been Spike 1, traumatised after a near drowning and wondering if that girl was worth all the drama. Now there are three E’s.
I’m back outside when Lady Spiny makes a run for it as well. Really though, after weeks of constant male attention, who wouldn’t want to get away? Two Spikes give chase, dashing towards their in-season beloved at the bottom of my garden. In a game of follow the leader, three of them scramble through the scrub; their spines scratching at the dry undergrowth.
Lady Spiny stops and backtracks. For a few seconds, three echidnas form a confused love triangle; rotating spikes in an echidna cuddle-ball. The three separate and forward off again. They’re a trio of little beasts searching for sex and hoping against hope to be mated, despite the competition.

I saw an echidna love-train; now I’m completely in awe. It was cute, it was fascinating, and like nothing I’ve witnessed before.
I’m also loving the rescue guy, who saved an echidna from a watery death in our fishpond. He feels like a bit of a hero to me.
Echidnas need very little water to survive, like koalas. In Aboriginal language the name koala means no water. The ongoing drought we’re having means there is nothing for the native animals to drink for a 2.5 km radius. It’s horrid that climate change and global warming mean these ancient critters have to lap from pot plant bases or almost drown themselves at my home to get to water.
Scientific sounding echidna information is from: “Field Guide to Australian Mammals” by Cath Jones and Steve Parish. Steve Parish Publishing.
Disclaimer: Various snippets of the above article, including the incredible inner sensuality and dogged desire of certain Monotremes, is entirely created from my own skewed imagination after watching them for three hours one warm winter day.
