Matilda the echidna beats crippling ant allergy – with a little help from science

Vets develop vaccine after first known record of an echidna being allergic to their core food source

Calla Wahlquist

Tue 2 Oct 2018 03.51 BSTLast modified on Tue 2 Oct 2018 17.45 BST

Matilda is an unusual echidna. She is curious where her peers are shy, and gregarious where they are solitary. She is also allergic to ants.

For a species also known as the spiny anteater, that is a significant problem. It is the first known record of an echidna being allergic to their core food source.

Keepers at Victoria’s Healesville Sanctuary noticed something was wrong when Matilda, who came to the sanctuary as a three-month-old 700g puggle in 2010, was weaned off milk on to an adult diet of ants and termites. The symptoms became pronounced when she was two years old.

“She became really puffy and red around both of her eyes, there was a lot of discharge coming from her eyes, and it also affected her belly,” Healesville Sanctuary vet Claire Madden told Guardian Australia. “She lost a lot of hair and also the skin on her belly was really raw.”

Echidnas are prone to various types of dermatitis, usually caused by a parasite like ticks, mites or lice. They can also get secondary skin infections after a traumatic incident like a dog bite or being hit by a car, and also sometimes suffer from dermatitis caused by fungal infections that take hold when they are kept in poor conditions.

Vets at Healesville went through all of those options, trying various topical cures and subjecting Matilda to regular bathing and courses of antibiotics, all of which she accepted with good grace, before veterinary dermatologists at the Melbourne Veterinary Specialist Centre suggested an allergen test.

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