Dr. Ted Stankowich

Or I suppose been on the receiving end of a defense.

Well, so working with echidnas, we think of them as just curling up into a ball with their spike sticking out.

So you can pick them up, and you can wear gloves.

You pick them up, and your hands are protected with leather gloves.

When you're handling them, if you're fully handling them, they will sort of clench their back muscles.

And I called it bucking, where they're trying to clench their muscles and jab their spines into your hand.

Ooh.

And so they would certainly do that while you're handling them.

And even with leather gloves, your little spines get through the gloves and you get little tips in your fingers.

But that's the closest to an attack I've ever experienced.

I've been bitten by a rat during a capture one time while handling it.

But otherwise, nothing that was ever life-threatening.

There's lots of people out there who go run and grab animals in the wild.

A lot of herpetologists and entomologists will go grab their animals in the wild.

That's not my thing.

I just know the stress it puts on animals and I prefer to just observe.

So I don't have a history of being attacked or bitten in retaliation for grabbing them.

So, yeah.

So a skunk spray, it's an old myth that tomato juice will descend to skunk.

It does not work.