[HN Gopher] Attenborough's long-beaked echidna rediscovered in I...
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Attenborough's long-beaked echidna rediscovered in Indonesia
Author : curmudgeon22
Score : 183 points
Date : 2023-11-10 19:53 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.cbc.ca)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.cbc.ca)
| hfv68 wrote:
| That conflict resolution method is pretty creative. Thanks for
| posting!
| koolba wrote:
| The egg laying by the females is interesting. But what's four
| times as interesting is the structure of the male's business end.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Echidna
| vasco wrote:
| > Male echidnas have a four-headed penis. During mating, the
| heads on one side "shut down" and do not grow in size; the
| other two are used to release semen into the female's two-
| branched reproductive tract. Each time it copulates, it
| alternates heads in sets of two. When not in use, the penis is
| retracted inside a preputial sac in the cloaca. The male
| echidna's penis is 7 centimetres (2.8 in) long when erect, and
| its shaft is covered with penile spines. These may be used to
| induce ovulation in the female.
| askonomm wrote:
| Holy crap. Tell me again why the heck are we so interested in
| trying to find aliens when we have plenty bizarre stuff
| walking the earth with us?
| TheGoddessInari wrote:
| Because the aliens are already here, just like the
| echidna...
| lakpan wrote:
| With plenty of bizarre stuff on earth, my pet peeve is
| having aliens depicted as anthropomorphic.
| dillydogg wrote:
| The back legs of an echidna face backwards too!
|
| https://ielc.libguides.com/sdzg/factsheets/short-beaked-echi...
| DrBazza wrote:
| Named after Sir. David Attenborough no less.
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-67382235
| lmpdev wrote:
| I didn't realise there was a fourth species
|
| 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
| bitwize wrote:
| If you tangle with an Echidna Warrior, get ready for a fight.
|
| Highlight of my Australia Zoo visit was seeing a zookeeper
| holding an echidna like a baby and feeding her honey.
| cookie_monsta wrote:
| > 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
|
| Love a good dangling modifier. Did you end up finding your
| mate?
| stephenr wrote:
| He found a horny echidna, I think he found a new mate.
| Jedd wrote:
| > I didn't realise there was a fourth species
|
| 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).
| adaml_623 wrote:
| BBC article on the same news:
|
| "Of the four echidna species three have long beaks, with the
| Attenborough echidna, and the western echidna considered
| critically endangered."
|
| We need references stay!
| Jedd wrote:
| Ah, thanks - I hadn't gone reading other news sites about
| this article, and had assumed GP was referring TFA, but
| couldn't see anything that might have inspired that
| comment.
|
| 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."
| dwd wrote:
| Very tough, and they hang on tight to the ground when you go to
| rescue one that's in a dangerous place. But possibly the only
| Australian native animal that you don't have to worry about
| being bitten, kicked, clawed or envenomed.
| serf wrote:
| >but it's essentially a sphere of pure muscle and bones
|
| that's kind of how handling a large male basset hound is.
| gonzo41 wrote:
| I had this happen as well. My trick is to pour water on them.
| They get a suprise and then are easy to scoop up and move to
| the bush close by.
| EdwardDiego wrote:
| They're rather delightful. I went into the NSW bush and was
| disappointed at the lack of snakes and spiders the size of
| dinner plates, but I saw an echnida doing its own thing and
| spent half an hour just watching its slow and methodical path.
| Affric wrote:
| Strange to see West Papua plainly described as Indonesia.
|
| It's a great video. The feeling of euphoria is very real and in
| the vast and in the isolated jungles of Maritime South East Asia
| there is a little thrill knowing just how isolated you are.
|
| On an island. In a jungle. Miles from the airport via river and
| foot. On a mountain.
| singingfish wrote:
| > Strange to see West Papua plainly described as Indonesia
|
| Yeah I did a double take on this too.
| nickff wrote:
| Is the strange part that they used the (politically designated)
| country name rather than the (geographically oriented) island
| name? This seems normal to me, as journalists frequently
| describe locations by political names.
|
| Who calls the area West Papua? The Indonesians seem to refer to
| it as "Western New Guinea", and "Papua" seems to be an
| antiquated term used to refer to some part(s) of the island of
| New Guinea.
| elemenopy wrote:
| It is a politically fraught issue because there is a long-
| running independence movement,[1] which the parent comment
| may have been obliquely referring to.
|
| 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Papua_Movement
| markdown wrote:
| > Who calls the area West Papua?
|
| The natives of West Papua who are being genocided out of
| existence by their colonial overlords in Indonesia.
| stubish wrote:
| Given the geography of Indonesia, it seems necessary to use
| more specific place names, like we do for Borneo or
| Galapagos. The term 'Indonesian' becomes meaningless in many
| contexts because the scope is so vast.
| robobro wrote:
| Everyone in my part of Kalimantan calls it Papua -- never
| heard a native refer to it as New Guinea
| Affric wrote:
| When I was in Borneo (the only island in the region with
| three countries occupying parts of it), unless what we were
| doing was related to a national government, we said Borneo.
| When my colleagues who were working in Sulawesi referred to
| their work, I never once heard "Indonesia".
|
| Yet, and I have seen this story a few times now, it has
| exclusively been with the term Indonesia.
|
| With a country as big and diverse as Indonesia the
| island/islands one is working on does matter.
|
| So it seems deliberate to avoid naming the geographic term.
| And it is controversial.
| twelvechairs wrote:
| Worth noting also its east of the Wallace Line [0] which
| generally separates Asian (west) from Australasian (east)
| species
|
| [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallace_Line
| divbzero wrote:
| Has the article been updated? I was thinking "West Papua" might
| refer to the province but I can't find the term in the article
| at all.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Papua_(province)
| elromulous wrote:
| This animal would be so much more obscure if it weren't for
| Sega's publicity campaign [0].
|
| [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knuckles_the_Echidna
| ssss11 wrote:
| Wow I had no idea Knuckles was supposed to be an echidna! Ha
| sphars wrote:
| Knuckles is the only reason I know that there is an actual
| animal called an echidna
| brian_herman wrote:
| Same
| ImaCake wrote:
| Echidnas are known to essentially everyone in Australia. I
| would say most bushwalkers I know have seen them before as they
| are not difficult to find. It surprises me that they are not so
| well known outside Australia.
| divbzero wrote:
| > _The echidna is embedded in the local culture, including a
| tradition that states conflicts are resolved by sending one party
| to a disagreement into the forest to search for the mammal and
| another to the ocean to find a marlin, according to Yongsu Sapari
| elders cited by the university. Both creatures were seen as so
| difficult to find that it would often take decades or a
| generation to locate them. But once found, the animals symbolized
| the end of the conflict and a return to harmonious
| relationships._
|
| If only all worldly conflicts could be resolved so peacefully.
| tremon wrote:
| Do we know which conflicts were resolved by this sighting?
| dudeinjapan wrote:
| The console war between SNES and Sega Genesis is hereby
| resolved with the sighting of Knuckles the Echidna.
| davidw wrote:
| > Kempton's team survived an earthquake, malaria and even a leech
| attached to an eyeball during their trip
|
| Yeeeash...
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Yeah, that one really stood out to me, though leech eyeball guy
| has a great story for life.
| Tao3300 wrote:
| _Worth it. Boss hugged me when we found out the camera caught
| an echidna._
| tiahura wrote:
| Seems like it would be an easy meal for all sorts of predators.
| zabzonk wrote:
| apart from being covered in spines, living in a burrow, and
| only coming out at night?
| justatdotin wrote:
| Rare monotreme rediscovered in *Indonesian-occupied West Papua.
|
| Merdeka!
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| I wonder if they'll be able to get a breeding pair in captivity
| somehow, or at least ensure a prospering stable wild
| population...
| pacaro wrote:
| Apparently nobody has ever been able to persuade any Echidna
| species to breed in captivity, so capturing any would reduce
| the chances for the species as a whole
| swyx wrote:
| but we still have to try, to get anywhere
| _jwfergus wrote:
| Semi-terrestrial shrimp.
| lemak wrote:
| I hope Indonesians start appreciating more what they have.
| Although I doubt this is possible without significantly improving
| their living standard first.
|
| There is open wildlife trade on the Sunday market near my place.
| Birds, monkeys, lizards, snakes, sugar gliders, and some unknown
| to me "things".
|
| The nearest police office is about 20 meters from it.
| rex_lupi wrote:
| Export of "exotics" to markets in EU & USA is rampant from
| Indonesia. CITES protection is often not enough
| gizajob wrote:
| Echidna part of local folklore for thousands of years.
| Attenborough comes along making a tv show. Gets named after him.
| pvaldes wrote:
| Everybody says echidna is cool, it lays eggs, echidna is this,
| echidna is that... nobody aws about the poor lowland streaked
| tenrec
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(page generated 2023-11-11 23:02 UTC)