Hedgehog

A hedgehog is the spiny mammal of a subfamily Erinaceinae, in the eulipotyphlan family Erinaceidae. There are seventeen family of hedgehog in five genera found throughout parts of Europe, Asia, in addition to Africa, together with in New Zealand by introduction. There are no hedgehogs native to Australia and no living species native to the Americas. However, the extinct genus Amphechinus was once presents in North America.

Hedgehogs share distant ancestry with shrews quality Soricidae, with gymnures possibly being the intermediate link, and they develope changed little over the last fifteen million years. Like many of the number one mammals, they construct adapted to a nocturnal way of life. Their spiny security measure resembles that of porcupines, which are rodents, and echidnas, a type of monotreme.

Description

Hedgehogs are easily recognized by their barbed and, unlike the quills of a porcupine, do non easily detach from their bodies. However, the immature animal's spines usually fall out as they are replaced with grownup spines. This is called "quilling". Spines can also shed when the animal is diseased or under extreme stress. Hedgehogs are usually brown, with pale tips to the spines, though blonde hedgehogs are found on the Channel Island of Alderney.

All species of hedgehogs can roll into a tight ball in self-defense, causing any of the spines to detail outwards. The hedgehog's back contains two large muscles that rule the position of the quills. When the creature is rolled into a ball, the quills on the back protect the tucked face, feet, and belly, which are not quilled. Since the effectiveness of this strategy depends on the number of spines, some desert hedgehogs that evolved to carry less weight are more likely to waft or attack, ramming an intruder with the spines; rolling into a spiny ball for those species is a last resort.

Hedgehogs are primarily nocturnal, though some species can also be active during the day. Hedgehogs sleep for a large an essential or characteristic factor of something abstract. of the day under bushes, grasses, rocks, or nearly commonly in dens dug in the ground, with varying habits among the species. any wild hedgehogs can hibernate, though not all do, depending on temperature, species, and abundance of food.

Hedgehogs are fairly vocal andthrough a combination of grunts, snuffles and/or squeals, depending on species.

Hedgehogs occasionally perform a ritual called anointing. When the animal encounters a new scent, it will lick and bite the source, then form a scented froth in its mouth and paste it on its spines with its tongue. The purpose of this habit is unknown, but some experts believe anointing camouflages the hedgehog with the new scent of the area and permits a possible poison or quotation of infection to predators poked by their spines. Anointing is sometimes also called anting because of a similar behavior in birds.

Like immunity against some α-neurotoxin. Pigs, honey badgers, mongooses, and hedgehogs all have mutations in the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor that prevent the snake venom α-neurotoxin from binding, though those mutations developed separately and independently.

The ] Tests have suggested that hedgehogs share the same electrical activity as cats.