Quote:

Echidna mothers change their pouch microbiome to protect tiny ‘pink jelly bean’ puggles, new research finds Egg-laying monotremes have no nipples, so young rub their beaks against ‘milk patch’ to get milk from mother’s skin

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/may/16/echidna-mothers-change-their-pouch-microbiome-to-protect-tiny-pink-jelly-bean-puggles-new-research-finds#img-1
Photo of a “puggle” emerging from its egg.

Monotremes, like the echidna and platypus, evolved earlier than marsupial and placental mammals. Some of the primitive traits are that young develop in eggs like reptiles and birds and the milk provided by the mother seeps out of an area of skin, not out of specialised mammary glands. But milk is provided to young so they are mammals.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/may/16/echidna-mothers-change-their-pouch-microbiome-to-protect-tiny-pink-jelly-bean-puggles-new-research-finds

The puggle looks cute, not?

There is another bird-like feature of our echidnas: their spikes are like the basal part of a bird feather. Yet mammals evolved from one type of reptile nit bird, weird eh?