Deep dive 2 min read
Echidna Babies: What Is a Puggle?
A baby echidna is called a puggle. It hatches from an egg the size of a grape, lives in a pouch and drinks milk that oozes from its mother's skin.
Most mammals give birth to babies. The echidna lays an egg, hatches it in a pouch and raises a pink, jelly-bean-sized baby with one of the best names in nature: a puggle.
What is a puggle?
A puggle is a baby echidna. When it hatches, it’s tiny, pink, hairless and blind, about the size of a jelly bean. Nobody knows for sure where the name came from, but it’s now used by scientists and zookeepers alike.
Step 1: an egg in a pouch
Echidnas are monotremes, egg-laying mammals, like the platypus. About three weeks after mating, the female lays a single soft, leathery egg about the size of a grape. She rolls it straight into a pouch on her belly, a temporary fold of skin that forms for the breeding season.
Step 2: hatching
About 10 days later, the puggle hatches inside the pouch. It uses a tiny “egg tooth” to break the shell, much like a baby bird or reptile.
Step 3: milk without nipples
Echidnas have no nipples. Instead, milk oozes out of two patches of skin inside the pouch, and the puggle licks it up. Echidna milk is rich, and towards the end of nursing it can even look pink, because it carries a lot of iron.
Born from an egg, raised in a pouch, fed from a sweaty skin patch. The puggle does babyhood its own way.
Step 4: moving out
After about 50 to 55 days, the puggle starts growing spines. Carrying a spiky baby in your pouch isn’t much fun, so the mother digs a nursery burrow and leaves it there. She comes back every few days to feed it, and it drinks huge meals each visit.
The young echidna is weaned at around six to seven months and then heads off on its own.
Strange but true“Puggle” is also the name of a dog crossbreed: half pug, half beagle. Searching for “puggle” photos online can give you a very confusing mix of spiny babies and floppy-eared puppies.
Is a baby platypus also a puggle?
Not officially. You’ll see the word used online, but scientists usually just say “platypus young”. Read more in Do Platypuses Lay Eggs? and Platypus vs. Echidna.
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