Like its Australian cousins, the eastern long-beaked echidna lives alone and is nocturnal. It uses its sharp claws for digging burrows to live in. It spends its nights foraging humid forests for earthworms. Its eyesight is poor, but its hearing and smell are sharp, which helps it to find food and avoid danger at night. If attacked by a predator, it will back itself into a log or curl up into a spiny ball. The eastern echidna uses its sticky tongue to slurp up earthworms for its meals. It has no teeth, but it does have hooked spines at the back of the tongue and on the roof of the mouth that it uses to mash the worms before swallowing them! The males and females can be easily identified because the males possess a spur on their hind legs, whereas the females do not.

Like the platypus, echidnas are monotremes, or mammals that produce milk for their young but reproduce by laying eggs. During July, the female eastern echidna will produce as many as six eggs a special pouch on her belly. Her eggs will hatch ten days later and the young will live in the pouch for the first six-to-eight weeks of their lives. After that the offspring will be placed in a safe place such as a burrow until they are old enough to live on its own.

Once plentiful across New Guinea, the eastern long-beaked echidna is now critically endangered. It has been overhunted for food, and much of its habitat has been destroyed so the land can be used for farming. Presently the eastern echidna survives in the high mountains of Papua New Guinea. There are also plans to begin nickel mining in these remote places, which may push the echidna even closer to extinction.

Though the threats to the eastern long-beaked echidna are severe, there is hope. This species has been listed on Appendix II of CITES, which closely regulates its international trade. The Papua New Guinea Institute of Biological Research is also working to track the echidnas with radio collars and to spread awareness to local communities so that the echidnas and their habitat can be protected. There are also other organizations with broader goals of protecting the overall biodiversity of Papua New Guinea that are helping to protect the echidnas.

To learn more about this amazing momotreme and what is being done to save it, check out these awesome pages:

Papua New Guinea Institute of Biological Research-This organization is dedicated to studying and preserving the biodiversity of Papua New Guinea.
http://www.pngibr.org

Tenkile Conservation Alliance - A conservation group dedicated to protect the biodiversity and the cultures of Papua New Guinea.
http://www.tenkile.com/index.html

Mongabay: "The Long-beaked Echidna: can we save the earth's oldest living mammal?" - Mongabay is news and information site dedicated to spreading environmental information and awareness. Here they offer a more thorough article about the long-beaked echidna, its threats and what is being done to save it.
https://news.mongabay.com/2015/10/the-long-beaked-echidna-can-we-save-the-earths-oldest-living-mammal