Echidnas are recognisable and widespread yet unpredictable, unsocial and elusive. ‘In the face of danger, they clam up and hunker down.’ Few people have accurate data on population size and growth/decline. It’s in the title: they’re enigmatic! The Enigmatic Echidna is a detailed book exploring Australia and New Guinea’s spiky egg-laying mammal.

The last time biologist Danielle Clode was in Sydney, she caught a ferry up the Parramatta River in search of echidna carvings. When English colonists landed in Sydney Cove, they began to look around and noticed an abundance of rock carvings. The Indigenous knowledge, artefacts and understandings contribute to the impressively well-researched chapters. The ‘before’ exploring historical context, the ‘now’ all about echidna habits, feeding and behaviour – even perception, thinking and dreaming! The book concludes with the ‘future’, exploring ongoing survival, sexual reproduction (in the wild and captivity), rearing young and thriving in a changing environment.

This book is an enjoyable hybrid of detailed, precise and scientific language blended with the more personable, poetic and conversational. (In one anecdote, an echidna repositioning a rock in her zoo enclosure is compared to mythical Sisyphus from Greek mythology, known for the eternal task of rolling a boulder up a hill.) The book is approachable and easy to read, delivering unexpected and enlightening insights about Australia’s curious spiky creature.

Reviewed by Mark Parry

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Danielle Clode is a biologist and natural history author. Her books include Koala, winner of the 2023 Whitley Award for Popular Ecology; Killers in Eden, which was made into an award-winning ABC TV documentary; Voyage to the South Seas, winner of the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Non-fiction; In Search of the Woman Who Sailed the World; and The Wasp and the Orchid, which was shortlisted for National Biography Award.

Visit Danielle Clode’s website here.

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