Freaky Echidnas, Getting Freaky

As anybody with kids knows, television can be a challenge. Not the watching of necessarily, but the agreement upon what you and said child(ren) should view together.

I like to watch movies. My son likes to watch batshit acid trips of cartoons that make him howl with laughter. And never the twain shall meet.

We were having such a discussion the other night, fighting between “I’m going to pick out a movie” and “BUT CAPTAIN UNDERPANTS IS GREAT WHY DON’T YOU LOVE ME?” when I stumbled across a show that was pretty much just comparing cute animals to other cute animals and we both went, “definitely this. This is the one.”

I watched for a while but since I go to sleep at 7 and he goes to sleep at 8:30, I let myself drift off and, in true American fashion, trusted the television to takeover parenting for me.

Hit the point where I, a light sleeper, come to just enough to hear about the Echidna’s double vagina and four-headed Cerberus of a donk.

It was like when my dear husband took me to a Star Wars premier. I went because I adored him and his geeky excitement. But, the showing being at midnight, I promptly fell asleep once we were seated and the movie started. It was a prequel so really, it was just as good as being awake through it, and I could have happily schnoozled my way through that disaster.

But no. I woke up at one point and looked at the screen to see a vast sea of Wookies, all marching off to war or some shit.

And that’s when I went back to sleep.

Which is exactly what happened when I heard what my kid was learning about echidna reproduction. “That is definitely a discussion for Govneh Tomorrow. not Gov-now.”

I have to be honest, however. Waking up with “Echidnas have a four-headed penis” is definitely some fever dream shit, the likes of which you tuck in the back of your mind and try to forget. The issue is that my mind whispers that kind of stuff back to me in the quiet moments, the busy moments, and, most often, the inappropriate moments.

“Hey, did you push through that permit application?”

“Hey, do you know what I think I heard about echidnas but I’m worried I dreamed it and it feels wrong to google that shit? I mean, sure. Permit. Whatever.”

Finally I broke down and told my husband and we both had a good laugh.
Then I googled echidnas.

Things I have learned:

  • How to spell ‘Echidna’

  • Echidnas are related to the platypus

  • The echidna and the platypus are the only surviving members of their order

  • Echidna, like the platypus, lays an egg from its cloaca and transfers it to a pouch

  • The resultant hatched baby echidna is larval and called a, get this, A PUGGLE

  • Echidnas have no nipples, just, like, milk areas, that the puggle suckles from.

  • Skeletons aren’t cute, except in the case of the echidna. The echidna skeleton is fucking adorable:

Echidna_skeleton (1).jpg

And this—all of this—I learned before I reached a single god damn thing about the mysteries of echidna downstairs mix-ups.

I’m a pretty open-minded person and even I know you can’t lead with information like what I read, but somehow I learned the entire reproductive cycle, diet and taxonomy of the echidna before we even touched on what the fuck is going on in this mammal’s multi-use bird hole.

I was not on drugs. I was not dreaming. If you read long enough about echidnas, you also learn the following things:

  • Males do, in fact, have a 4-headed penis.

  • During mating, two heads ‘shut down’

  • The other two heads are utilized for sperm delivery…

  • …into the female’s two-branched reproductive tract

That’s the point I should have stopped reading but I’m such a glutton for this information. I love how wild and fascinating some of this stuff is. The fact that millions of years and some interesting evolutionary steps led to these developments captivates me.

And then there’s human interference, which is where evolution went wrong. Because I also learned:

  • Echidnas have no interest in fucking in front of cameras…

  • That’s not what I meant. Echidnas will not reproduce in captivity.

  • Yeah, that’s right.

  • Also, echidna ejaculation was not witnessed until 2007

  • The article did not list whose bucket list that shit was on but I don’t want to be their friend.

  • Maybe.

  • Scientists tried to force echidna ejaculation

  • (again, whose fucking bucket list?!)

  • through electrical stimulation but it only resulted in “penis swelling”

  • Article did not list what kind of apologies were made to said echidna, or what a proper apology gift is for giving an echidna a swollen penis.

You’re welcome.