On our way to look for wattle in bloom the other day we saw this Echidna walking across the road, so we stopped and waited for the other cars to pass then walked across the road to find the echidna safe, so hence the photos.
The Tasmanian short-beaked echidna is a subspecies of short-beaked echidna endemic to Tasmania. It was first described by Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire in 1803 as Echidna setosa.
The spines on a Tasmanian Echidna are not poisonous: they are modified hairs made of keratin that serve as a dense mechanism, and the male echidna has a non-venomous spur on its hind leg that produces a waxy secretion for communication.
The photos should have been clearer, the Echidna kept moving and I didn't have time to fix the camera as I thought it would, (the echidna) would disappear.
