: a spiny-coated toothless burrowing nocturnal monotreme mammal (Tachyglossus aculeatus) of Australia, Tasmania, and New Guinea that has a long extensible tongue and long heavy claws and that feeds chiefly on ants
also: several related mammals (genus Zaglossus) of New Guinea having a longer snout and shorter spines
Illustration of echidna
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There are two species of echidna. Both are egg-laying mammals that are stocky and virtually tailless. They have strong-clawed feet and spines on the upper part of a brownish body. The snout is narrow and the mouth is small, with a tongue that is long and sticky for feeding on termites and ants, their chief food. New Guinea echidnas are 18–31 in (45–78 cm) long and piglike. Valued for their meat, they are declining in numbers. Echidnas of Australia and Tasmania are 14–21 in (35–53 cm) long. Echidnas exude milk from mammary openings on the skin, and the young lap it up.
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The long-beaked echidna once also lived in the Oenaka Range of Papua New Guinea.—Julia Jacobo, ABC News, 12 June 2025 From the outside, the specimen looked more like a bone from a land-dwelling echidna than a water-loving platypus.—Amanda Schupak, CNN Money, 30 Apr. 2025 However, evidence of the echidna's existence was found throughout the region in recent decades.—Julia Jacobo, ABC News, 12 June 2025 Some of the fossil’s features suggest monotremes might have evolved from living in the water to land — and could explain the bizarre, backward feet echidnas have today.—Ashley Strickland, CNN Money, 4 May 2025 See All Example Sentences for echidna
Word History
Etymology
borrowed from New Latin, genus name, going back to Latin, "snake, viper (as an attribute of the Furies)," borrowed from Greek échidna "viper, creature of myth combining the bodies of a woman and a snake," of uncertain origin
Note:
The name Echidna was first used without a formal description by Georges cuvier in Tableau élémentaire de l'histoire naturelle des animaux (Paris: An 6 [1798]), p. 143: "Fourmiliersépineux (echidna) : à corps ouverts de piquans. On n'en connoît q'une espèce, qui est de la Nouvelle-Hollande, et a les pieds et la queue excessivement courts." ("Spiny anteaters (echidna): with a body covered in spines. Only one species is known, which is from New Holland [Australia], the feet and tail of which are extremely short.") As Echidna had been used earlier (1788) for a genus of fish, it was replaced in taxonomy by the genus name Tachyglossus in 1811. — Greek échidna has usually been taken to be a derivative of échis "viper," by derivation with the suffix -ja from a presumed adjective *echidnós "of a viper," from échis "viper," an i-stem. R. Beekes, however, regards -dna as a typical pre-Greek suffix and thus assigns échidna to a pre-Greek non-Indo-European substratum (Etymological Dictionary of Greek, Brill, 2009).
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