Platypus and Echidna Babies

"QUANTUM SHOT" #487
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Spread the echidna love!

Platypus and echidna babies are considered to be the cutest... and some say the ugliest! You can make up your mind here, after seeing this wonderful series of images (by an exclusive permission of Australian photographer Den Whitton).

Den thinks "it's unfair that the platypus gets all the fame when the echidna is just as weird, and even less understood. Spread the echidna love!"

(baby echidna, photos by Den Whitton, on the bottom right: grown echidna, source: AP Photo/Dan Peled)

Baby echidna is called a "puggle" (puggle-licious!). Echidnas and the Platypus are the only egg-laying mammals, so all this cuteness (ugliness) actually hatched out of an egg: imagine this cute snout poking out of the shell...

(photos by John Lyle, Stephanie Julian)

Echidnas (or "spiny anteaters") are toothless - they break open the termite nests and ants get stuck to their long sticky tongues. Just like porcupines and hedgehogs they curl into a ball when disturbed or frightened. Their eggs are incubated in a pouch, and the mother carries the baby until it starts to grow spines. Here's an orphaned 30 days old echidna, without fur and spines yet:

(images credit: Den Whitton)

Vulnerable... ticklish...

(image credit: Helen Thomas)

You can see the needles starting to grow:

(photos by Den Whitton, more images in this set)

"Happiness is a well fed puggle", says Den:

(photos by Den Whitton and news.com.au)

Platypus Babies!

Platypus is so weird looking, that it was considered a fraud when first discovered (somebody must've stuck a duck bill to a beaver's body). A crazy concoction of bird parts (the bill), reptile internal organs, that is actually a mammal, swimming underwater for 10 minutes at a time.

(image via)

Platypus babies are not called "puggle", but they gotta have a cute name, so some suggest a name "platypup".

(images sources 1, 2)

"When the Platypus lays eggs it is thought that she incubates them by resting them on her stomach and curling her tail over them."

Platypus cuteness ends with childhood: The male platypus has venom (on a small spur on the backside of his hind legs) that is strong enough to kill a small dog, and very painful for humans.