A survivor

"Echidnas are one of the most pacifistic mammals. Nobody bothers them; they don’t bother anybody. There’s a lot we could learn from them.” And in that level head sits a mighty brain. Among humans, the neocortex that allows us to reason and remember accounts for 30 percent of the brain; in echidnas, that figure is 50 percent.

--from Brainy Echidna proves looks aren't everything.

The article does not mention that Long-beaked echidna species are considered critically endangered.

Echidna not

Hugh Warwick celebrates a prickly affair. Apparently there are 600 carers registered with the British Hedgehog Preservation Society. The number of Jeremy Clarkson-alikes who would squash the animals for fun is not stated.

Pliny wrote, wrongly, that porcupines were a species of hedgehog:

when [a porcupine] stretches the skin, it discharges [its spines like] so many missiles. With these it pierces the mouths of the dogs which are pressing hard upon it, and even sends its darts to some distance further.

Echidnas are not hedgehogs either. The largest known species, Zaglossus hacketti, was about the size of a sheep.

Monotreme extreme

The fact that the animal has five X and five Y chromosomes is "the weirdest thing about a very weird animal," said Ewan Birney, a co-author on the paper..."In theory it means there are 25 possible sexes, though in practice that doesn't happen."