Tapping its beak along the rocky ground, it suddenly stops and cocks its head. A moment later, the shoveling of soil and ripping of roots breaks the tranquil midday quiet. Halfway beneath a large limestone rock the creature pauses, then, using spines, head, and shoulders, it pops the rock loose of its earthly constraints.
Subterranean dwellers scurry as their snug cover moves.
As quickly as the digging began, the beaked gnome backs out of the hole, blinks the dirt from its eyes, and soundlessly disappears into dense under story. With that, the oldest and one of the strangest and least-known mammals on Earth slips back into its peculiar obscurity. Rismiller, a biologist at the University of Adelaide, needs your energetic help to pull back the veil on that obscurity. Since Earthwatch teams began working with her in 1991, she and researcher Mike McKelvey have found, marked, and studied more than 70 individual echidnas on this enchanted island. While digging for prey, they till the soil in a way that promotes the growth of plants and the insects they eat.