The first time I saw an Amphisbaenian — well, a photo anyway, of an Amphisbaenia alba — I had an immediate, survival-based, gut reaction.
I thought to myself, That creature is going to devour my soul and destroy everything I hold dear, just because it can.
And okay, granted, you might be thinking that that’s a bit of an overreaction, especially for a suborder composed mostly of animals who are tiny enough to be dwarfed by the palm of your hand. I get that, okay? I know it’s crazy. But have you seen these things? It’s like those graboids from Tremors decided to create little mutant babies with one of those chest-bursters from Alien. Don’t believe me? Think I’m over-hyping it? LOOK AT THIS THING.
This is an ajolote. It's the cutest of the Amphisbaenians, which isn't saying much. It's like a worm-snake-lizard. With legs. Most commonly seen slouching towards Bethlehem.
Though they sort of look like snakes or giant worms, they’re neither. They might be reptiles, but there’s a bit of debate about that, too. I find them pretty debatable in general. They are named for a mythical two-headed snake though, because most of them have a sort of blunted tail that looks like a second head on the opposite end of the body. (And some of them can shed their tails when they’re grabbed by a predator. Nice one, Amphisbaenians!) One of their defining features is that their skin is very loose over their musculature, and they can use it to move both forward and backward. It sort of looks like their skin moves by itself, and the body just sort of drags along behind. Yeah, that’s not creepy at all.
They also have very solid skulls for burrowing through earth; some have spade-shaped heads to pack the tunnel roof as they dig along, and some have plow-shaped heads and dig with a side-to-side motion that packs the tunnel walls. Most species (there are about 160 in total) don’t have limbs like our friend the ajolote up there does, but they do have pelvic bones embedded in their musculature, which is good evidence that they did have limbs at one point. Some lay eggs, some give birth to live young, some probably live carefree and childless lives of debauchery. They’re carnivorous, and according to Wikipedia they are “able to tear chunks out of larger prey with their powerful, interlocking teeth.” F that.
This is a white-bellied worm lizard. It's one of the bigger Amphisbaenians, and I'm pretty certain that it's going to steal my eternal soul.
Don't look it in its creepy, tiny, scale-covered eyes!
Sometimes, this sort of sight is featured in my nightmares.
That’s pretty much all I have to say about Amphisbaenians, to be honest. I’d try to dig up more info for you but I’m getting creeped out all over again just looking at that last picture. I’m afraid I don’t have the fortitude for this kind of research.
Featured Creature Fridays are a new feature here on the Red Roan Chronicles blog… check back every Friday for new weird and wonderful facts about creatures you may or may not know. Let me know what you think, and if you’ve got a featured creature suggestion, post them in the comments!
Today I’m going to introduce you to a bizarre and wonderful creature called an echidna. If you’re anything like me, you’re aware of the existence of the echidna, but unaware of just how remarkably strange they are. (This is true of many things in Australia, but one of the nice things about echidnas is that unlike practically everything else in Australia, they are neither poisonous nor deadly.)
The echidna is a cute little spiny creature, sort of like the bastard lovechild of a hedgehog and an anteater. It borrows bits of its physiology from birds, reptiles, marsupials and mammals. It has multiple sets of sex chromosomes. It probably even knows Barry Manilow’s entire catalog by heart. Behold, the erudite echidna:
The short-beaked echidna of Australia...
And the magnificent long-beaked echidna of New Guinea. Photos under public license from Wikipedia.
Photo by Sklmsta, under public commons license, by way of Wikipedia.
If there was a way for me to reanimate the skeleton of an echidna and take it for walks around my neighborhood on a leash, like something out of a Tim Burton film, I would do it. Just look at that thing. LOOK AT IT.
But we were talking about eggs, which leads us to echidna reproduction, which is where things get really strange. Echidnas like to form “mating trains,” where the hopeful males follow females around for days in a long “train” of echidnas up to 11 individuals long, and they do this for literally months on end, until the female is ready to mate with one of them. Or possibly several of them; apparently echidnas are “promiscuous.” They’re also only the second animal known to mate during hiberation periods or to reenter hiberation after mating. (There’s a quote in that link that says, “Thus the echidna mating system appears to be characterised by roving promiscuous males which guard promiscuous females before and after mating.” Oh science, you’re so sexy.) So basically, sometimes male echidnas wait until the females are hibernating, then they mate with them, guard them from other males, and thus increase their chances of successful paternity. Not cool, male echidnas.
When the female is ready to mate, she digs herself in at the base of a plant and waits for some action. All those males, meanwhile, dig a sort of circle-shaped rut in the ground around her, then use it as an arena to battle for her love, shoving each other out of the way until somebody emerges as the victor. So they sort of create echidna crop circles. But without the crop part. And with echidnas.
Now, I know what you’re thinking: that stuff’s not all that weird. Well hold on, people, because shit’s about to get real. Among the male echidna’s reproductive adaptations is a penis with a “quadripartite anemone-like appearance.” What does that mean, exactly? It means he has a four-pronged penis. When he mates, he uses two of them in the female’s two-forked reproductive tract. Then when he finds himself another woman, his other two penii are already ready to go. Also, he shoots “semen bundles.” Aren’t you just freaking fascinated right now? I hope you are, because there’s video. Of course there’s video. Science is taking advantage of all the latest advancements in technology to bring you more detailed information about the echidna and its penis.
The female gives birth to her egg directly into her pouch, where the egg gestates and eventually hatches a baby that’s called a “puggle.” I’m not going to show you a picture of a puggle yet. I don’t think you’re ready. It’ll come when you’re prepared to handle it. First, I’m going to tell you about echidna nipples. They don’t have any. So you might be wondering how on earth this amazing new puggle is meant to sustain itself. Luckily, female echidnas do have “milk patches” right their in their pouches, where milk essentially seeps out of their pores (echidnas have pores, apparently!) for the puggle to lap up. Genius. Once the puggle starts developing spines, the mom’s all, “Screw this, I’m not keeping this pointy thing in my pouch anymore,” and she digs a nursery burrow and leaves her puggle there, coming back to feed it every five days or so until it’s weaned, which takes about seven months.
So, have you prepared yourself? Are you ready? Have you reached a point in your life where you need to see what a baby echidna looks like? I hope so. Because if you’re not prepared, the cuteness of a puggle can be dangerous.
Echidna can be found in Australia and New Guinea. The short-beaked echidna found in Australia prefers a diet of ants; the larger long-beaked echidna, in Australia, uses a long beak to hunt for worms underground. It doesn’t just lap them up with a long tongue, though. It spears them like it’s harpooning Moby Dick. The long-beaked echidna therefore is the obvious choice for a personal guard and attack animal. I mean, if you have a worm problem.
Well folks, that’s our first Featured Creature Friday. I hope you’ll share these fascinating facts about echidna reproduction with all of your friends and loved ones, so that they might be better prepared when I unleash my army of ravenous trained attack-echidna upon the world. Stay tuned for next Friday, when I’ll be introducing you to another bizarre inhabitant of our planet. Like, even more bizarre than this one. But hopefully with more conservative sexual proclivities, because come on, echidnas. You’re just getting out of control, now.
Want to learn some more about echidnas? Like ones that actually cite sources and are all scientific and whatnot? I thought you might. Here are a few links for you!
