How does the spiny anteater bear her young?
This little mother is a native of Australia, home of most of the world’s marvelous marsupial animals. So we might expect her to carry her babes in a pouch, perhaps like the one that a mother kangaroo has on her tummy. Although she is not a member of the marsupial family, she does indeed carry her young in a built in pouch. We tend to assume that birds and snakes lay eggs and think of the mammals as a separate group because they bear live young. True, ail the birds do hatch from eggs, but after that the rule relaxes a little. Some of the snakes bear their young alive, and a very few of the mammals lay eggs. One of them is the unbelievable duckbill platypus. Another is the spiny anteater, alias the echidna.. Both of these mammals are natives of Australia where, perhaps, their oddities go unnoticed amidst the assort¬ment of weird and wonderful wild life. Animals are not classified as mammals on the basis of their live bearing habits. The key factor is the feeding of the young. All mammal
