They moved through the forest almost silently, silhouetted against the early morning light shining through the trees. Suddenly stock still, his ears pricked up, Billy noticed them first. He didn't strain against the lead to give chase, just watched. A large mob of kangaroos, alerted by our presence, moving to safer ground.

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They navigated effortlessly through the trees, soundless but for the occasional crack of twigs under their outsized back legs. What would the Europeans who first encountered these strange creatures have thought? And what would they have made of the kookaburras, whose alarm at the sudden movement echoed as maniacal laughter through the spotted gums?

Had they chanced upon an echidna, as Billy and I occasionally do on our walks, how would they have reacted? Would they have known how strange this creature was? An egg-laying mammal with a toothless beak for a snout at the front end and a birdlike cloaca at the other. A small animal so strong it can shift many times its own body weight and has a Houdini-like ability to escape confinement.

These questions are answered by Danielle Clode in her fascinating new book, The Enigmatic Echidna, the cover of which promises to reveal the secrets "of the world's most curious creature". When I saw it at the bookshop, I couldn't resist, and not just because it's about the namesake of this newsletter.

Clode traces the evolution of the echidna from the scarce fragments left behind for paleontologists to pore over to its current status as Australia's most widespread mammal, a surprising fact given coming across one is for most people a rare thing.

"Unpredictable and unsociable, they follow their nose wherever it takes them ," she writes in her introduction. "Whatever their schedule is, they keep it to themselves. If one happens to cross your path, that is all to your good fortune and of little interest to them."

Certainly, when Billy and I encounter them, these creatures go to ground, balling up in the leaf litter, defensive spines a........

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