Sloth+Echidna-+Tommy+Kim

Steropodon- Steropodon Galmani
 * Ancient Animal**

**Modern Animal** The echidna- Tachyglossus Aculeatus.

Sloth Echidna- Tachyglossus Semper
 * Future Animal**

=__**The Sloth Echidna**__=

The Sloth echidna with all its features A curled up sloth echidna, with its features.

The sloth echidna have evolved from the current echidna, and has adapted to the environment that the humans brought about. Extreme heats, high water levels, all due to the global warming caused by humans. This made the sloth echidna become much more resistant to these aspects of environment. However, not all organism will be able to survive forever. In the future, all animals on earth will die out due to all resources being wasted by humans, so will the sloth echidna in this process. One by one all the sloth echidnas will die out from not being able to find any food at all because all organic material rotted away.

**Habitat**
The environment for the sloth echidna is quite harsh, with extremes of heat and extreme dryness due to global warming and scarce trees. They live mostly right in the burrow they have dug up with their long arms, and stay there for around 2-3 weeks until moving away, they. The habitat can be very unexpected, as the extreme dryness that continue on for months, will come back with floods with rain coming for days on end. There are very few predators around, and very little of them being able to feast on the sloth echidna. The sloth echidna’s main diet, termites and ants still, are hard to be found, but is around when searched

**Adaptations**
**Extremely Low metabolism- Physiological** The sloth echidna is extremely lazy. It stays in a ball shape most of the day, up to 3 days in a row at times, to keep itself going with the minimal amount of food consumed. As time passed by, humans have used up most of its natural resources, and animals started dying out, so most animals were forced to live with the least amount of resources provided. The sloth echidna has developed itself so that it would be able to protect itself even at its rest, curing itself into a ball for most of the day hiding in a burrow it digged up with the spine sticking out above ground, so that they would not be in danger even when they are not doing anything whatsoever. This has helped the sloth echidna to become extremely well suited for the environment, with a scarce food source.

**Hard skin on its back- Structural**
The sloth echidna have developed a very hard skin, from the years of echidnas being run over by cars. The skin has become so hard that the echidna would survive an average motor car running over them. Not only protecting itself, the echidna would have done more damage to the vehicle than itself. The hard skin on the back also contributes to the spines sticking well to the echidna’s back as the roots of the spines will have to break through the hard skin to be able to be pulled out. This will be a very important factor for the sloth echidna to have, since it is constantly run over by the traffic, or crushed by anything else, so this hard skin will save many sloth echidna’s lives.

**Long arms- Structural** The long arms of the sloth echidna will help in the survival of it by a great chance. It helps the sloth echidna dig up anything it may need to find, such as water, ants and termites, or to dig up its own burrow in a short time for protection of itself and its young. However, with the extremely low metabolism, it will rarely dig anything up, unless it is looking for food, protecting itself, or for reproductive purposes. This helped the survival of the sloth echidna, as it is able to dig things up with much less effort. These long arms have spikes on them so that every side of the echidna will be covered with spikes when they curl up into a ball. As a lot of animals and plants dying out from overconsumption by humans, these features created a huge advantage for the sloth echidna since it needs to find everything buried underground as plants are a very scarce resource, it is very hard to find things clustered together. Also, as the climate becomes extremely hot, due to global warming, the sloth echidnas are forced to have to lose their excess body heat, a good way of doing this is with long external body parts. The long arms of the sloth echidna does just this.

**Nomadic- Behavioral** As a lot of the plants died out, the plants became a very scarce source, it made it impossible for any animal to stay in one single environment as every ecosystem was dying out, with a drastic change, most animals were forced to become nomadic, in other words, they will have to search for food, instead of having abundant food around. Sloth echidnas were not an exception, though in a very unique way. As the sloth echidna moves extremely little, it does not move around too much. Though the exception of finding food, when the sloth echidna becomes hungry, it moves around in search of food, then when it does find food, it will eat as much as possible, then goes back to sleep in its curled shape. Then whenever it wakes for food, it will eat as much as possible again. Only when the food finally runs out, the sloth echidna will move out in search of food. In a lifetime, the sloth echidna could travel up to 5,000 kilometers. This is a very good adaptation for the sloth echidna because it is an extremely efficient way of survival. Another animal that does this is the black-backed jackal

**Nocturnal- Behavioral** Much like the echidna today, the sloth echidna is nocturnal. They do this in order to keep themselves cool in the extreme hot environment that they are forced into by the over-gathering of resources by mankind. The trees are on the verge of dying out, and global warming keeps rising due to the fact that humans are decreasing the amount of plants that reduce global warming and produce much more carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that make the climate hotter. The sloth echidna being nocturnal will allow it to save more energy, and allowing it to be only active in the coldest time of the day, at night. This will help the sloth echidna in survival because to much heat in the environment will create problems such as hyperthermia, and this will prevent it.

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