Western long-beaked echidna

Description

The western long-beaked echidna is an egg-laying mammal. Unlike the short-beaked echidna, which eats ants and termites, the long-beaked species eats earthworms. The long-beaked echidna is also larger than the short-beaked species, reaching up to 16.5 kilograms (36 lb); the snout is longer and turns downward; and the spines are almost indistinguishable from the long fur. It is distinguished from the other Zaglossus species by the number of claws on the fore and hind feet: three (rarely four). It is the largest extant monotreme.

Distribution and habitat

The species is found in the Bird's Head Peninsula and Foja Mountains of West Papua and Papua provinces, Indonesia, respectively, in regions of elevation between 1,300 and 4,000 metres (4,300 and 13,100 ft); it is absent from the southern lowlands and north coast. Its preferred habitats are alpine meadow and humid montane forests.

A re-examination of a specimen in the British Museum (Tring collection), noted as collected at a site in the Kimberley region of north-west Australia, was identified as this species. The skin and skull is labelled as part of the material collected by John T. Tunney on an expedition through that region in the 1930s. If accurate it is evidence of a species thought to be have been extinct for millennia in Australia; the only records up to that time of Zaglossus was of fossils dated to the Pleistocene period. The conclusion of the authors, supported by evidence from Aboriginal elders of the region and similar habitat to Papuan population, was that this species ought to be recognised in the state's fauna as persisting into the modern era and may be extant in a poorly surveyed area of the region.

Conservation

The species is listed as Critically Endangered by the IUCN; numbers have decreased due to human activities including habitat loss and hunting. The long-beaked echidna is considered a delicacy, and although commercial hunting of the species has been banned by the Indonesian and Papua New Guinean governments, traditional hunting is permitted. In January 2013, an expedition led by Conservation International reported finding a population of the mammals as part of what they described as a "lost world" of wildlife in the Foja Mountains of Papua Province, Indonesia. A specimen collected in 1901 by John T. Tunney, later identified by Helgen et al. (2012), might prove that, in addition to New Guinea, the species inhabited the northern part of Western Australia (Kimberley) at least as recently as the beginning of the 20th century.