Head to head
Echidna vs European Hedgehog
A spiny, snuffling, ground-dwelling animal that eats invertebrates and curls up when frightened describes both the echidna and the hedgehog, and the two are regularly confused by anyone outside their home ranges. They are not related. The hedgehog is a placental mammal, a close relative of shrews and moles. The echidna is a monotreme, one of only five living species of egg-laying mammal, alongside the platypus. Their resemblance is one of the more dramatic cases of convergent evolution.
| Echidna | European Hedgehog | |
|---|---|---|
| Group | Monotreme (egg-laying mammal) | Placental; a relative of shrews and moles |
| Reproduction | Lays one egg; puggle hatches into the pouch | Live birth of a litter, spines soft at first |
| Native to | Australia and New Guinea | Europe, western Asia; introduced to New Zealand |
| Face and feeding | Toothless tube-snout; long sticky tongue; electroreception | Pointed toothed muzzle; hunts by smell and hearing |
| Spines | Stiff spines mixed with coarse fur; can be short | A dense, even coat of 5,000 to 7,000 spines |
| Rolling into a ball | Partial; more often wedges into a crevice or digs down | Complete, sealed ball via a purse-string muscle |
| Body temperature | About 32 C, the lowest of any mammal | Typical mammal temperature; drops in hibernation |
| Conservation | Short-beaked common; long-beaked species critically endangered | Declining sharply across the UK and parts of Europe |
Echidna vs Hedgehog: common questions
Are echidnas and hedgehogs related?
No, and they are on opposite sides of one of the deepest splits in the mammal family tree. The hedgehog is a placental mammal, meaning its young develop in the womb attached to a placenta, and its closest relatives are shrews, moles, and other small insectivores. The echidna is a monotreme, part of the tiny, ancient lineage that branched off before placental and marsupial mammals even separated, and it retains the reptile-like trait of laying eggs. An echidna is more closely related to a platypus, and in a distant sense to a kangaroo, than to a hedgehog.
Do both echidnas and hedgehogs lay eggs?
Only the echidna. It is one of just five egg-laying mammal species in the world, the other four being the platypus and the three long-beaked echidnas. A female echidna lays a single leathery egg directly into a pouch that forms on her belly during the breeding season; it hatches after about ten days, and the tiny puggle stays in the pouch drinking milk from patches of skin, since monotremes have no nipples, before being moved to a burrow. Hedgehogs are ordinary placental mammals and give birth to live young in a nest.
Which one is in my garden?
It depends entirely on where you live. In Britain, Ireland, continental Europe, or New Zealand, a spiny nocturnal animal shuffling through the flowerbed is a hedgehog; there are no wild echidnas anywhere in the northern hemisphere. In Australia, it is a short-beaked echidna, which is widespread across the continent including in bushy suburbs, and there are no wild hedgehogs. The two ranges do not overlap at all, so the identification is really a question of which continent you are on.