Enigmatic Echinda with Danielle Clode

Join us at Harry Hartog Burnside to celebrate Danielle Clode’s new book, The Enigmatic Echidna: Secrets of the World's Most Curious Creature, in conversation with Professor Michael Jennions.

About the Book

There are few animals more unusual than the echidna – a spiky, egg-laying mammal that eats ants. But some of the most striking things about echidnas are things most of us don't know. That they use their snout like a snorkel when they swim, that they can sense electromagnetic fields, that they have intriguingly complex brains, startling physical strength and 'backwards' back feet. That they go into torpor when conditions are poor and can survive fires by sheltering underground. And that during the mating season, male echidnas will line up behind a female, making cooing noises and forming an orderly echidna train, waiting for their chance to impress her with some very strange reproductive equipment!

In The Enigmatic Echidna, biologist and award-winning author Danielle Clode follows the echidna on its eclectic path through the Australian landscape. Equal parts surprising, amusing and enlightening, it is an irresistible journey into their unique and beautiful world.

'A new book from Danielle Clode is always a treat, and The Enigmatic Echidna is no exception. I learnt so much when reading this book, including the fact that echidnas' intelligence, like everything else about them, is unique. Clode's stories about echidnas seem to amble out of the datasets, archives, history books and Country straight onto the page. Most moving of all is the way Clode conveys the fact that even to spy one of these remarkable animals in the wild is a blessing.' —Sophie Cunningham

About Danielle Clode

Danielle Clode is a biologist and natural history author. Her books include Koala, winner of the 2023 Whitley Award for Popular Ecology; Killers in Eden, which was made into an award-winning ABC TV documentary; Voyage to the South Seas, winner of the Victorian Premier's Literary Award for Non-fiction; In Search of the Woman Who Sailed the World; and The Wasp and the Orchid, which was shortlisted for National Biography Award.

About Michael Jennions

Michael Jennions is a professor of evolutionary biology at ANU. For over two decades he has studied the fundamental processes that shape animal behaviour, particularly behaviours that are related to choosing mates, mating and rearing offspring. Michael grew up in South Africa and started his career there working on frogs. He studied for his PhD in the UK, and then spent five years in Panama working on fish in the rainforest before settling in Canberra

Books available for purchase and signing in store