The species was already considered to be almost extinct: Now an Attenborough’s long-beaked echidna has been photographed on camera in Indonesia. The University of Oxford said the hedgehog-like mammal, which has a beak and lays eggs, was captured on film and photos during an expedition in the Cyclops Mountains of Indonesia’s Papua province.
The existence of the shy animal had only been scientifically documented once. However, that was more than six decades ago, in 1961. Therefore, the Attenborough’s long-beaked echidna (Zaglossus attenboroughi) was already considered almost extinct and was included in the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List of Endangered Species (IUCN). Like the platypus, it belongs to the order of monotremes, whose evolutionary line separated from that of other mammals around 200 million years ago. The animal was named after the British wildlife filmmaker David Attenborough.
The animal has the spines of a hedgehog, the snout of an anteater and the feet of a mole, said James Kempton of Oxford University, who led the international expedition. In the search for the long-beaked echidna, 80 cameras were set up in the remote region, the statement said. However, no recording was achieved during almost the entire four weeks of the expedition. It was only on the last day that three images could be seen in the last images of the last memory card checked. Kempton emphasized that cooperation with locals was crucial to the success of the expedition, which took the team into areas that no one had ever set foot in before.
