Figure 2.

Body temperature of two adult male echidnas over 10 days in November at (A) Lovely Banks in Tasmania and (B) Stanthorpe in south-eastern Queensland (redrawn from Grigg et al., 2004). Long term average November air temperatures at Lovely Banks: min 7.4°C, max 19.7°C; Stanthorpe min 12°C, max 25.3°C. T_b of the Tasmanian echidna drops below 30°C once in these 10 days, whereas in the Queensland echidna this occurs nearly every day. Normal daily variation in the Tasmanian echidna: 3°C, Queensland 6°C.