Facts about Hedgehogs
Their spines are actually hollow hair made stiff with keratin. Their spines normally come out when a hedgehog sheds baby spines and replaces them with adult spines. This is called "quilling". When under extreme stress or during sickness, a hedgehog can also lose spines. A defense that hedgehogs possess is the ability to roll into a tight ball, causing all of the spines to point outwards. They have some natural immunity against snake venom due to the protein erinacin in the animal's muscular system. Their spines are not poisonous or barbed and, unlike the quills of a porcupine, cannot easily be removed from the hedgehog. All wild hedgehogs can hibernate, although not all do; hibernation depends on temperature, species, and abundance of food. Hedgehogs are fairly vocal, and communicate not only in a series of grunts and snuffles, but sometimes in loud squeals. The gestation period of hedgehogs is 35 to 58 days. There are 16 species of the hedgehog in five genera. Hedgehogs are born blind. They are found through parts of Europe, Asia, Africa, and New Zealand. They feed on insects, snails, frogs and toads, snakes, bird eggs, carrion, mushrooms, grass roots, berries, melons, and watermelons. Hedgehog sleeps for a large portion of the daytime either under cover of bush, grass, rock or in a hole in the ground. Hedgehogs occasionally perform a ritual called anointing. When the animal comes across a new scent, it will lick and bite the source and then form a scented froth in its mouth and paste it on its spines with its tongue. It is not known what the specific purpose of this ritual is, but some experts believe anointing camouflages the hedgehog with the new scent of the area and provides a possible poison or source of infection to any predator that gets poked by their spines. Their average litter is 3 to 4 newborns for larger species and 5 to 6 for smaller ones. The hedgehog's dilemma is based upon the apparent danger of a male hedgehog being injured from a spine while mating with a female hedgehog. It is believed that the closer two animals are to each other, the greater chance they may hurt one another. However, this is not an issue for hedgehogs as the male's penis is very near the center of its abdomen (often mistaken for a belly button) and the female has the ability to curl her tail upward to the point that her vulva protrudes behind the rest of her body. As such, the male doesn't have to get completely on top of the female when mating. It is believed that they are born without quills, which develop in the following days. However the quills are easily visible within hours of birth. The infants are born with quills beneath the skin, like pimples, and pass the skin after they have been cleaned. Hedgehogs have a relatively long lifespan for their size. Larger species of hedgehogs live 4 to 7 years in the wild (some have been recorded up to 16 years), and smaller species live 2 to 4 years (4 to 7 in captivity), compared to a mouse at 2 years and a large rat at 3 to 5 years. It is not unusual for an adult male hedgehog to kill newborn males. |
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