Porcupine-Like Animal With Melted Thorns Shows How Tragic Australia's Bushfire Is For Animals

Images and videos on the internet have shown us the catastrophe that is caused due to the bushfires in Australia.

While it has caused severe damage to the forests and people living in them, it has also destroyed over a billion wild animals that lived in those forests, and now an image of an echidna that faced these fires truly broke out heart.

Echidna CSI/AP

In case you didn¡¯t know, echidnas are like a hybrid between a porcupine and anteaters. People often call them as spiny anteaters. These are egg-laying mammals, just like a platypus, with an elongated beak-like snout. They have tiny claws that help them dig into tiny burrows.

The image shows half a body of an echidna with the top half completely burnt, melting its spikes. The image was shared courtesy of Citizen Scientist Data Collection App dubbed Echidna CSI -- run by researchers at the University of Adelaide.

According to the scientists, when echidnas see fire, they go in a state of hibernation called ¡®torpor¡¯. In such a case instead of running away, they dig burrows with their claw-paws and try to hide underground, or hide under a pile of logs, waiting for the fire to go out completely.

However, the current bushfires were a little too hot for the tiny echidnas to handle that resulted in them not surviving. Found specifically in Kangaroo Islands of South Australia, the creatures are already endangered.

Getty Images

According to scientists, ?¡°Currently, bushfires are devastating much of Kangaroo Island and being labelled as 'virtually unstoppable' and we worry about the loss of echidna numbers during this time. Echidnas on KI are already listed as endangered and although they can survive fires by digging underground, these fires may be too intense to hide from.¡±

Researchers with the image are urging people in Australia to submit sightings about the echidnas to let scientists get a better perspective of the existing population and how it has been impacted in regions across the country.