Spiritual Forum

In cute animal news, Muggles the puggle, a baby echidna, was  found orphaned in the Australian outback and was rescued by a passer-by who  brought Muggles to a vet.  According to Metro.co.uk the echidna puggle began its four-day  journey across Australia, including two flights of thousands of miles, to his  current resting place in Queensland, Australia. The echidna puggle will be taken  care of before being released into the wild.

“Puggles are particularly difficult to look after, as they have different  requirements to most other orphaned mammals,” said Rehabilitation Coordinator  Vicky Toomey of the Australia Zoo Wildlife Hospital. “We don’t keep them in  the same manner as other marsupials as they naturally have quite a low body  temperature, and they also feed infrequently due to long digestion times.”

This means that Muggles the echidna puggle will require special hands-on  treatment for six months. In the same way that baby dogs are called  puppies, the baby echidnae are called “puggles.”  The ecna puggle got  separated from its mother somehow.  Like the marsupial kangaroo and koala  bear, echidnae are monotremes and have pouches. So it is most likely that poor  little Muggles fell from the mother’s pouch.

“Puggles of this size can take up to ten days to adjust to hand-raising and  consume enough food to put on weight,” she added. “The blue tinge to Muggles is  from the spines and fur starting to emerge from under the skin; in two weeks it  will be a very different looking puggle. It’s just the beginning for little  Muggles, with echidnas being known to live up to 49 years in the wild.”

In a similar story, an echidna puggle named Beau was rescued from the  Australian Outback and now resides in the Taronga Wildlife Hospital:

Read more at http://www.inquisitr.com/375830/muggles-the-puggle-echidna-survives-four-day-journey-across-australia/#itz6YOtYwFizEVXF.99