Second South-east Australian short-beaked echidna exhibit (Formerly wombat and dusky pademelon), 2021-04-20

Are they visible in their enclosures?

@Mr Gharial You can usually find them either indoors laying inside a hollow log (see also the image of the indoor housing), but sometimes you can also see them (or really mostly their backs) outside in a pit/hole they've dug. You would have to be very lucky though to see them awake and be able to see their faces, that is something I've only seen a couple of times in all the years I've been going to Planckendael and they have had echidnas. Most likely what you will see is a "mat" of spines.

@KevinB Seeing that we don't have them in the Netherlands, that's good enough for me!

@Mr Gharial In my most recent batch there was a photo of what you can reasonably expect to see in terms of an echidna (and there will probably be others in this gallery too).

Hopefully we'll be able and allowed to visit zoos in each other's countries and be able to freely travel in the low countries again as soon as possible, without the hassle of quarantines, testing and so on. But I'm afraid it isn't very likely for this summer.

I love the zoos we have in Belgium but there's several Dutch ones I would love to visit again.

@KevinB

My plans for a zoo trip have sadly been cancelled for the third year now, was hoping that it would be a sweet goodbye to teenagehood. But it seems like I'll be eighteen before I'll be able to visit any zoo again

@Mr Gharial I really hope Dutch zoos will be able to reopen as soon as possible. I really wish the Dutch government would see that they can be opened fairly safely, with some necessary limits and measures, like Belgium has done.

And I hope you will be able to make that trip soon.

@KevinB

The trip was planned for the may break (Two week vacation from 24/04 - 09/05), but since German zoos closed again and it's nearly impossible to travel I decided it was too much trouble

The government has been saying zoos will reopen soon for months, but they keep changing the date (16th March at first, chanced to April 1st, April 15th, April 28th, Now somewhere in May, but I doubt it)