Noun:

Echidna,

echidna's Usage Examples:

The echidnas are exceedingly restless in confinement, and constantly endeavour by burrowing to effect their escape.

That is to say, he believes that, with the exception of the duckbill and the echidna, the mammalian class as a whole can lay claim to descent from small arboreal forms.

The anatomical differences by which the platypus, and its only allies the echidnas, are separated from all other mammals, so as to form a distinct sub-class, are described in the article Monotremata, where also will be found the main distinctive characters of the two existing representatives of the group.

Australia and Tasmania possess two animals of this order - the echidna, or spiny ant-eater (hairy in Tasmania), and the Platypus anatinus, the duckbilled water mole, otherwise named the Ornithorhynchus paradoxus.

Of the three-clawed echidnas (Proechidna) confined to New Guinea there are two species, Bruijn's echidna (P.

The opening of the mouth is small, and from it the echidna puts forth its long slender tongue, lubricated with a viscous secretion, by means of which it seizes the ants and other insects on which it feeds.

Knuckles is an echidna that first appeared in Sonic the Hedgehog 3 and was a minion for Dr.

, and the black-spined echidna (P.

In common with the other monotremes, the male echidna has its heel provided with a sharp hollow spur, connected with a secreting gland, and with muscles capable of pressing the secretion from the gland into the spur.

There are two varieties of this species, the Port Moresby echidna and the hairy echidna.

Synonyms:

egg-laying mammal, monotreme, Zaglossus, genus Zaglossus, spiny anteater, anteater,

Antonyms:

None