Short-beaked echidnas avoid over-heating by blowing \u2013 and bursting \u2013 bubbles on their nose <\/p>
One of the quirkiest of all mammals, the egg-laying echidna of Australia, has been found to employ an appropriately eccentric method of cooling off in the heat, according to research published in Biology Letters<\/em>.<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cShort-beaked echidnas have the broadest distribution of any mammal in Australia,\u201d says Christine Cooper who led the new research. \u201cThey\u2019re all over the place, from alpine areas through to the deserts and the tropics.\u201d<\/p>\n Past experiments in the laboratory have suggested that echidnas cannot survive air temperatures above 35\u00b0C.<\/p>\n \u201cHeat exchange is much more complex in the wild than in the lab where the air temperature is kept constant by design,\u201d says Cooper.<\/p>\n \u201cEchidnas live in areas where they must be dealing with these high temperatures. In fact, people have measured the temperatures in logs where echidnas are sleeping and it\u2019s over 40\u00baC. The question is how they are doing that.\u201d<\/p>\n Please note external videos may contain ads:\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n