A baby echidna is making a recovery at Taronga's Western Plains Zoo in Dubbo after it was seriously injured by a bulldozer that accidentally dug up the animal's burrow.
The puggle, which the staff named Newman after the Seinfeld character, was only two months old when he was brought to the zoo. The animal suffered a deep wound and needed weeks of antibiotic treatment and a temperature-controlled artificial burrow to sleep in, the zoo said in a statement. Echidnas, sometimes known as spiny anteaters, resemble the anteaters of South America and other spiny mammals like hedgehogs and porcupines.
Samantha Elton, who has been serving as the surrogate mother for Newman, said in the statement that "it is still quite small for its age, but it has almost doubled in size since February and the wound has healed perfectly."
It's truly beautiful to see rescued animals, with very little chance of survival, go on to live long and healthy lives — like the baby sea otter abandoned by her mother or these homeless dogs found in a junkyard.
Today, Newman is making a remarkable recovery, and zookeepers have nursed a baby echidna back to health. As you can see in the video below, Elton feeds Newman from the palm of her hand, so the puggle can lap milk as it would do in the wild — and it's pretty adorable!
"The feeding process was very stop-start at first, but now the puggle is like a little Hoover. It will drink constantly for about 40 minutes, only stopping to blow milk out its nose," Elton added.
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