Echidnas eat ants, termites, and other small invertebrates, using a long sticky tongue to pull prey from nests, soil, and rotting logs. But the exact menu depends on the species. The short-beaked echidna found across Australia is a specialist in ants and termites, while the rarer long-beaked echidnas of New Guinea prefer earthworms and soft-bodied larvae. Both types are built from snout to claw for finding and consuming tiny creatures hidden underground or inside wood.
Short-Beaked Echidnas: Ants and Termites
The short-beaked echidna is the most common and widespread species, found in forests, grasslands, and even suburban backyards across Australia. Its primary food sources are ants and termites, though it also eats other invertebrates when the opportunity arises. An echidna tears open ant mounds, termite galleries, and decaying logs with its powerful front claws, then rapidly flicks its tongue in and out to collect insects. The tongue is coated in sticky mucus and can extend well beyond the snout, allowing the animal to reach deep into narrow tunnels.
Echidnas don’t have teeth. Instead, they crush prey between hard pads on the back of the tongue and the roof of the mouth. This setup works perfectly for soft-bodied insects but limits what they can eat, which is why their diet stays focused on small invertebrates rather than anything with a hard shell or significant size.
Long-Beaked Echidnas: Earthworm Specialists
The long-beaked echidnas of New Guinea have a noticeably different diet. These larger, rarer animals are primarily earthworm eaters. They forage through forest soil for earthworms and other soft-bodied invertebrates, including insect larvae. Their longer, downward-curving snout is adapted for probing into moist soil rather than breaking into hard termite mounds. They selectively target larger soil-dwelling prey, making them vermivores (worm-eaters) more than insectivores in the traditional sense.
How Echidnas Find Their Food
Echidnas locate prey using an unusual sense that most mammals lack: electroreception. The skin on an echidna’s snout contains specialized sensors that detect the faint electrical signals produced by muscle contractions in insects and worms. These electroreceptors respond to extremely weak voltage changes, picking up signals in the range of 0.5 to 200 cycles per second, with peak sensitivity around 20 cycles per second. That frequency lines up well with the tiny electrical pulses generated by moving invertebrates.
This means an echidna doesn’t need to see or smell its prey to find it. It can detect an ant colony or a cluster of larvae hidden beneath the soil surface simply by sweeping its snout across the ground. The system works especially well in moist conditions, where electrical signals travel more easily, which helps explain why echidnas are often most active after rain.
Seasonal Shifts in Diet and Foraging
Echidnas don’t eat the same way year-round. Research on Australia’s New England Tablelands found striking seasonal patterns. In summer, echidnas dig extensively through soil, and scarab beetle larvae show up in about 20% of their droppings. In winter, those beetle larvae disappear from the diet entirely.
The foraging strategy flips, too. During winter, 48% of the logs echidnas dug into contained ant or termite nests. In summer, that figure dropped to just 5%. This suggests that echidnas shift from soil-dwelling prey in warmer months to colony insects sheltering in logs during colder months, adjusting their technique based on what’s available and where.
Winter also brings a dramatic drop in overall activity. Soil digging falls to zero during the coldest months as echidnas enter torpor, a state of reduced body temperature and slowed metabolism that conserves energy when food is scarce. They can cycle between short bouts of torpor and full hibernation depending on the climate, waking periodically to forage before shutting down again.
A Low-Energy Lifestyle
Echidnas are among the lowest-energy mammals on the planet. Their daily energy expenditure in the wild runs around 645 to 763 kilojoules per day, which is remarkably low even compared to other similarly sized animals. For context, that’s roughly equivalent to the calories in a single banana. This frugal metabolism is possible because echidnas maintain a lower body temperature than most mammals, hovering around 31 to 33°C (88 to 91°F) instead of the typical 37°C.
This low energy demand means echidnas don’t need to eat large quantities of food. A few productive hours tearing into termite mounds or probing soil for larvae can sustain them for the day. Their use of torpor and hibernation reduces energy needs even further during lean periods, letting them survive in environments where food availability fluctuates heavily with the seasons.
What Baby Echidnas Eat
Baby echidnas, called puggles, hatch from eggs and depend entirely on their mother’s milk for the first several months of life. Echidna milk is extraordinarily rich. It contains about 49% solids by weight, compared to roughly 12% in cow’s milk, making it one of the most concentrated milks of any mammal. The dominant fat is oleic acid, the same heart-healthy fat found in olive oil, and the milk contains more than three times the iron found in the milk of placental mammals.
The composition changes over time. Early milk is more dilute, around 12% solids, and high in protein to support rapid early growth. As the puggle develops, the milk becomes progressively richer and fattier. Echidnas don’t have nipples. Instead, milk seeps through specialized patches of skin inside the mother’s pouch, and the puggle laps it up. Once the puggle grows spines and becomes too prickly for the pouch, the mother deposits it in a burrow and returns periodically to nurse until the young echidna is ready to forage on its own.
Echidnas as Ecosystem Engineers
All that digging for food has a major impact on the landscape. A single echidna displaces roughly 204 cubic meters of soil per year while foraging. That’s equivalent to filling a small swimming pool with dirt, turned over one noseful at a time. This constant soil disturbance aerates compacted ground, mixes organic material into deeper layers, and creates small depressions that catch water and seeds.
Even at low population densities, echidnas reshape soil structure across large areas. This makes them important ecosystem engineers, particularly in Australian woodlands and forests where soil health affects plant growth and water retention. Their appetite for ants and termites also helps regulate insect populations, keeping colony numbers in check across their range. With wild lifespans reaching an estimated 45 years, and captive individuals recorded living to 50, a single echidna can spend decades quietly reshaping the ground beneath it.