An animal thought to be extinct has just reappeared: Attenborough’s long-beaked echidna. With its hedgehog spines, ant snout and mole legs, it is in the same family as the platypus.
Attenborough’s long-nosed echidna is a monotreme mammal that is very difficult to recognize to the extent that its species was only described once in 1961. Until recently, it was thought to be extinct. The last days it was rediscovered in the Cyclops Mountains of Indonesia by a team of researchers.
Extremely difficult survey conditions
Researchers at the University of Oxford have pulled out all the stops in the hope of seeing it: dozens of cameras placed at strategic points and configured to capture anything that moves. Despite this advanced equipment, it was not until the last day of the expedition that it finally appeared on video. The biologist in charge of the mission, one James Kempton, told reporters his reaction: “I screamed, we found him, we found him!” Then I walked out of the office into the living room and hugged the boys.”
We understand his joy because to make this expedition possible, James Kempton and his team had to survive malaria and defy earthquakes, leeches, snakes and poisonous spiders, as well as extreme heat, “extremely difficult, even sometimes deadly conditions”.
If the long-beaked echidna is so difficult to recognize, it is because it is more of a nocturnal animal. Shy and homely, he likes to stay in his hole. It is part of one of the most bizarre orders of living mammals. Like the platypus, another otter-furred monotreme, it lays eggs, setting it apart from other mammals for hundreds of millions of years.
It remains to be seen how long, because while its rediscovery is great news, its species remains “critically endangered” according to the Red List of Threatened Species. A list that keeps growing. Scientists on the mission hope their work will highlight the need to preserve the biodiversity of Indonesia’s Cyclops Mountains and, more generally, to preserve all living species.