Photographic Evidence Confirms Survival of Attenborough’s Long-Beaked Echidna
Photo Credit: WAWA
A team on an expedition to Papua New Guinea has captured conclusive evidence of an endangered species of mammal previously feared to be extinct. Attenborough’s long-beaked echidna (Zaglossus attenboroughi), named after the British nature broadcaster, is one of only four living species of echidnas. “[It] has the spines of a hedgehog, the snout of an anteater, and the feet of a mole.” said Dr. James Kempton, a biologist and expedition lead from the University of Oxford.
The undertaking, termed Expedition Cyclops, was a collaboration between Oxford, an Indonesian NGO, local university students, and members of the community of Yongsu Sapari, according to Smithsonian Magazine. Expedition Cyclops found the echidna photos and videos at the very end of the four-week trip, on their final SD card.
Zaglossus attenboroughi first became known to science in 1961 when a specimen was collected in the Cyclops Mountains of Papua New Guinea, the only area in which the animal has ever been recorded. Since its discovery, it has been extremely rare. It is an elusive animal, small and nocturnal.
Known as payangko in the local Tepera language, the echidna was an element of traditional conflict resolution techniques. One party had to venture into the forest to find an echidna, while the other would attempt to catch a marlin in the ocean. The animals were considered so rare that by the time they were found, peace was considered to have returned.
Fieldwork in 2007 found evidence of echidna presence, according to Baillie, Turvey, & Waterman (2009). This evidence includes testimony from local villagers, as well as “nose pokes” — traces in the ground made by a feeding echidna searching for food with its beak. However, no photographs were taken.
Since 2009, scientists have speculated that the animal might be extinct. “Long-beaked echidnas are threatened across their range by subsistence hunting and habitat loss from farming, logging and mining,” stated the University of Cambridge paper that reported the 2007 discoveries.
Iain Kobak, the co-founder of a Papua New Guinea-based foundation that supported the expedition, said, “I really hope and believe [Expedition Cyclops] will become a catalyst for strong conservation of the Cyclops Mountain Range.”
Along with the platypus, the four echidna species are the only living examples of monotremes — a group of mammals that split off early on in mammalian evolution, thus lacking many derived features that all other modern mammals possess. Monotremes lay eggs instead of giving birth to live young, and have no nipples, instead secreting milk through pores found in specialized areas of the fur. Like reptiles and birds, but unlike other mammals, one opening, the cloaca, is shared by the digestive, urinary, and reproductive tract. “These five species are the sole guardians of 200 million years of evolutionary history,” said Dr. Kempton in The New York Times. “To protect that unique and fragile evolutionary history is extremely important.”
Despite their differences, however, monotremes also have many crucial features in common with placentals and marsupials, the other two groups of mammals. These include the presence of one fused lower jaw bone, three inner ear bones, hair, and the production of milk, according to University College London.
Monotremes are most commonly considered to have diverged from other mammals before the placental-marsupial split. Genetic studies indicate that monotreme divergence likely occurred around 200 million years ago, at the end of the Triassic period. Since then, monotremes have evolved many specialized features, such as a lack of teeth and a modified snout or beak.
According to The New York Times, the expedition also found multiple other species new to science, including a shrimp that lives in trees, a cricket, a scorpion, and a frog.