Even though they can’t sweat, the animals that look like hedgehogs and have sharp, prickly spines can live in hot climates.
Australian researchers have uncovered a surprising strategy used by certain animals to stay cool even in the warmest conditions: belly-flopping and blowing snot bubbles.
Echidnas are hedgehog-like animals with sharp, prickly spines that are meant to scare away predators. Despite being unable to sweat, echidnas can thrive in a wide range of environments and temperatures.
Now, researchers at Curtin University in Perth have determined that they produce snot bubbles to cool a pool of blood at the tip of their elongated beaks in order to tolerate the heat.
It was previously thought that echidnas expelled mucus from their noses to remove dirt and dust from their nasal passages.
But zoologist Christine Cooper’s thermal imaging has shown that the mucus bubbles wet the tip of the snout, which cools the blood under the skin and sends it through the body.
According to Dr. Cooper, “Echidnas can’t pant, sweat or lick to lose heat, so they could be impacted by increasing temperature.”
And this paper “shows alternative ways that echidnas can lose heat, explaining how they can be active under hotter conditions than previously thought.”
Dr. Cooper’s research team found that it’s not the only way the echidna keeps cool.
To stay cool, they also do belly flips.
She explained that echidnas utilize their spineless bellies and legs to lay down on or rub against cold surfaces.
She continued, “The next thing we need to do is some thermal modelling to see how important these thermal windows are for heat dissipation and where their thermal limits might lie.
“We can then calculate – do they have to spend ten minutes in the sun before they overheat, or can they spend an hour in the sun at different conditions- and how might that change their foraging duration and that sort of thing.”
Dr. Cooper’s findings, which were published in Biology Letters, show that knowing how echidnas deal with heat can help predict how they might react to climate change and a warmer environment.
Along with the platypus, echidnas are the only monotreme mammals that lay eggs, making them one of the world’s rarest animals.
Image Credit: Getty
