African Pygmy Hedgehog Facts

Video Transcript

"Well, this is an African pygmy hedgehog. I'm going to give her some mealworms to eat. And she's doing what hedgehogs do best, which is to eat insects. They are insectavores, and this particular species, erinaceus albiventris is one of the smaller, hence the name pygmy, and they are found in Africa, kind of in northern and western Africa. And so although they share this kind of common evolutionary trait of having a body covered in spines like that of the porcupine, porcupines are rodents and are not related to hedgehogs. Hedgehogs are more closely related to moles and shrews, which are other insectavores. Hedgehogs are burrowers, so they don't do a lot of climbing like a porcupine does. Instead, they use these front claws to dig out insects. And they will eat worms, they will eat spiders, they will eat a variety of beetles. They will eat millipedes, they will eat scorpions, and the European variety of hedgehog is actually known to eat venomous snakes. So here is a hedgehog kind of doing its main defense. You can see how they will erect their spines and curl into a very tight ball. They also often kind of make this kind of ticking or pluffing sound, and they'll direct their quills outward so that whatever is attacking them will get actually poked by them, because unlike a porcupine, their quills don't actually come out of their body when they're attacked. Their quills instead just create that really irritating prick from the toxins that they, that they incorporate into their quills from the things they eat. They do dig burrows; often at the roots of trees, or in Europe, hedgehogs are known to frequent people's gardens looking for insects to eat. And they hibernate in the wintertime in their northern ranges. And then in their southern ranges in Africa they would actually kind of estivate during the really hot parts of the year, they would spend a lot of time underground staying cool."