From moving fridges to lifting car seats – echidnas are known to be muscly little mammals.
But there is more to echidnas than their strength.
UQ researchers are investigating how echidnas raise their body temperature after hibernation and how they cope living in extreme heat.
Echidnas can vary their body temperature between three and 35 degrees Celsius and PhD student Dave Ellis wants to find out what they do internally to heat up.
Mr Ellis has one theory that a calcium pump system through the echidna’s skeletal muscles produces heat.
The other theory is that a hormone similar to adrenalin is released which allows the animal to take up more nutrients and oxygen which produces more heat.
He will record their shivering, body movement, metabolic rate and body temperature.
Fellow PhD student Peter Brice is investigating how echidnas survive summer temperatures of more than 40 degrees when lab tests have indicated a body temperature rise to 38 degrees is enough to kill them.
Echidnas can’t sweat or pant but Mr Brice believed they survived the heat of hot logs by slowing their metabolic rate which allowed them to go into torpor.
“If they can do that in the cold why can’t they do that in the heat?” Mr Brice said.
Their heat tolerance was also boosted by insulation from its spines, hair and fat layer and the ability to vary their blood supply.
Mr Brice is measuring and recording a range of thermal biology measurements including oxygen consumption of the echidnas in artificial logs.
Both researchers are studying echidnas at UQ in Brisbane sourced from the Idalia National Park in western Queensland.
Mr Ellis said he had read stories where an echidna had moved a fridge but saw their strength firsthand when he rescued one from a road at Glen Innes, NSW.
He put the echidna under his car seat on the way to a vet, but it managed to lift him and his chair – even with a broken back.
For more information contact Mr Ellis or Mr Brice (phone: 3365 1391) or Miguel Holland at UQ Communications (phone: 3365 2619, email: m.holland@uq.edu.au)
