I had to rescue a horny short nosed one which had trapped itself between gutters on a high speed road while looking for a mate a few years ago
These things are STRONG. The spikes aren’t much of a concern if you’re trying to pick one up, but it’s essentially a sphere of pure muscle and bones
Love a good dangling modifier. Did you end up finding your mate?
Hang on, which are you calling the fourth?
A popular pub-trivia question is how many types of (living) monotremes are there - two (echidna and platypus).
However if the question is how many (living) monotreme species - then (well, up until now) the answer was four - the platypus, plus three species of echidna (Western, Sir David's, and Eastern).
"Of the four echidna species three have long beaks, with the Attenborough echidna, and the western echidna considered critically endangered."
We need references stay!
Though I did note that TFA used the misleading (or simply wrong) phrase:
"A different echidna species is found throughout Australia and lowland New Guinea."
Highlight of my Australia Zoo visit was seeing a zookeeper holding an echidna like a baby and feeding her honey.
that's kind of how handling a large male basset hound is.