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Recently, a short-beaked echidna (Tachyglossus aculeatus) was found on campus with a ring of metal wrapped around and partly embedded in it’s beak.  Quick thinking EBE staff captured the animal and transferred it to New England Veterinary Services (NEVS) for treatment. The echidna was then placed in care with WIRES before being successfully released back into the bush above ring road. This is a wonderful outcome for one of Australia’s most wonderous mammals, and a true survivor of this continent; as a group they have an evolutionary history of more than 100 million years, and the short-beaked echidnas wandering our campus have been unchanged for about 15 million years.

Echidnas are monotremes – egg-laying mammals – whose only living relatives are the long-beaked echidnas of New Guinea, and the platypus. Australian’s might take mammals that lay eggs for granted, but most people around the world are stunned to learn that there are mammals alive today that lay soft leathery reptile-like eggs into a marsupial-like pouch, where the young hatches and begins to feed on milk. Adult echidnas feed on ants and termites, but in places like New England, they help out farmers by eating significant amounts of pasture grubs like cockchafer beetle larvae. We are fortunate to have these ancient mammals on our campus – not every Australian university can lay claim to a thriving local population, and they are only found in Australia. Echidnas also have particular cultural importance to the Anaiwan people – the traditional custodians of the land on which the university is built – who know the animals as ‘iwata’ (pronounced ‘ee-wat-ah’).

Steve Ahoy, UNE’s Cultural Heritage Advisor and Anaiwan Elder, first noticed the injured animal and worked with another UNE staff member and WIRES carer, Mardi Cook, to safely deliver it to New England Veterinary Services for further care. According to Steve there are many Aboriginal Nations that have Cultural stories relating to the Australian Echidna, but to the Anaiwan people of the Northern New England tablelands, the Australian Echidna is their totem or spirit animal. 

An Aboriginal totem is a spiritual representation taken from the natural environment in the form of an object, plant, or animal as a symbol of their identity, responsibility to each other and the environment, totems are also believed to be descendants of family members from the past and future. It’s important to note that Aboriginal totems are not ‘owned’ but maintained. This means that Anaiwan members must ensure that the Echidna is properly cared for; they must protect their totem and pass it on from one generation to the next. This involves caring for country and natural resources in their area to make sure that they’re used properly and are available to their totem animals.

Images courtesy of New England Veterinary Services, Mardi Cook and Estelle Boshoff.
Text: Professor of Wildlife Ecology and Conservation Biology, Karl Vernes, and UNE Cultural Heritage Advisor, Steve Ahoy.