On the list of things you expect to write about on any given day, “uncontrollably horny echidnas” definitely ain’t high up, I can tell you that much.
But that, apparently, is the situation facing Queensland‘s population of spiky bastards at the moment. In amongst a positively raging mating season, the Sunshine State’s population of male echidnas are apparently toey as shit.
So unbelievably horny, these echidnas. Absolutely filthy for it.
In fact, they’ve all copped the horn that bloody hard that it’s completely throwing off their sense of equilibrium and direction, and as a result they’ve been getting stuck in suburban backyards and hotel gardens and the like.
TO RECAP: Echidnas in QLD are that horrendously in heat that they have literally been getting stuck inside a bush.
It is them. The horniest of all echidnas.
Professor Stephen Johnston, who is a biologist at the University of Queensland who lectures in reproduction, making him a prominent expert in the field of monotreme smanging, confirmed that it is a little bit late in the year to see echidnas this goddamned randy, but that echidna mating habits are still something of a mystery to researchers.
“Typically males go looking for girls around that period and that’s when most people see them. Normally everything is done and dusted by September/October, in terms of the animals have laid an egg, and they’ve got a puggle in their pouch.”
“I don’t know whether things are changing. I think that’s one of the things that people are still trying to work out because they seem to breed at the same time throughout the whole of Australia.”
“It doesn’t seem to be the length of the days or whatever that’s changing it; there’s a lot of theories. We’ve found, certainly in captivity, that providing the animals with the right amount of nutrition is really important in terms of whether they decide to breed or not.”
Meanwhile, Rockhampton Rescue Rehabilitation and Release co-ordinator Svetlana Mitin confirms they’ve been rescuing the filthy aroused beasts from all over the bloody place; they scurry in searching for some strange, only to find themselves trapped in a fenced off area with no escape.
“We’re getting them from the gardens of busy hotels in town, simply because they’re stuck in the garden, because there’s a fence around them and they can’t move out.”
Unbelievable. Such outrageously horny conduct.
If you happen to come across one of these out-of-control beasts in your backyard, you can apparently carefully help relocate them to a grassy area nearby if you believe they are trapped.
But that’s obviously totally dependent on whether or not you’re keen to go a thorn-laden sex beast in dire need of a wank and a lie down.
That’s your call to make, ultimately.
Photo: Ullstein Bild/Getty.
