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home’s landscaping

Updating your home’s landscaping is a great way to increase the value of your property and create outdoor spaces for relaxing and entertaining. Unique ideas here will make your garden fit for a king

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Category: Porcupine

Porcupine interesting facts are abundantly available. As some of nature’s most interesting looking creatures, there has been much research on their life cycle and, of course, the quills that cover their bodies. Please take a moment to enjoy some of these fascinating details about the porcupine.

  • Porcupines are also called hedgehogs, quill pigs or quillers.
  • Porcupines have are special ability to retain nitrogen from their food and not allow it to pass through. This is what allows them to survive in the winter on a steady diet bark. They have even been likened to deer and other ruminant animals because of this trait.
  • Porcupines constantly lose weight in the winter. As a matter of fact, researchers estimate that they lose nearly 30% of the body weight though the colder months.
  • Porcupines in the Rockies carry with them 50 plus wood ticks that can carry the Colorado Tick Virus. They rarely spread the virus because only adult ticks live on the porcupines and adults do not carry the virus.
  • The Porcupine quills are actually a third type of hair found on the animal. They also have course guard hairs and a dense, bristly undercoat.
  • Native Americans used the quills of the porcupines for hair brushes and decorations.
  • The quills have a greasy type coating on them that allows for easier penetration into an attacker! The quill’s coating is much slicker during the summer when their diet is more nutrient rich.
  • The quills have an antibiotic property just in case it is the porcupine that gets stuck.
  • Porcupines have been noted as falling out of trees quite often and unfortunately, have occasionally been impaled by their own quills.
  • Porcupines have about 30,000 quills that can be up to five (5) inches long.
  • Newborn porcupines weigh more than grizzly bear cubs do at birth.
  • Porcupines mate in the fall and give birth in the spring. This means that they have the longest gestation period of any rodent.
  • A baby porcupine is called a porcupette.
  • Porcupines are waddling creatures but may actually erupt into a gallop when frightened.
  • Porcupines are not listed as threatened or endangered but have been eradicated from parts of the United States. They are in danger of becoming extinct in Northern Michigan and Northern Mexico due to an enhance population of fishers who prey upon the porcupines.
  • Porcupines are nocturnal. This helps them take advantage of the added nutrients available through the overnight process of plant metabolism.