Ten Facts…

…about hedgehogs

ONE: the BBC’s Gardeners’ World Magazine, which surveys its many readers annually, has just announced that urban hedgehog numbers appear to be rising. Excellent!

TWO: hedgehogs usually wake from their hibernation in March, but this worryingly warm February may well wake them early. If you find a hedgehog in your garden, make sure it can get out , that it can find somewhere warm and dry to sleep, and take advice before you leave out food for it.

THREE: hedgehogs are well established in urban environments in the UK. They have adapted to life in our parks, wasteland and cemeteries – and in our gardens as long as they are joined up with neighbouring gardens. New research has shown that urban hedgehog behaviour differs measurably from that of rural hedgehogs.

FOUR: hedgehogs travel between one and two kilometres each night, visiting several gardens in maybe several streets. As many as a dozen different individual hedgehogs might visit a garden regularly.

FIVE: hedgehogs used to be called urchins – and sea urchins are really sea hedgehogs.

Left: hedgehog, previously called an urchin; right: sea urchin so named for its similarity to a hedgehog

SIX: worldwide, there are fifteen different species of hedgehog, all looking very much alike. Our hedgehogs are a single species: Erinaceus europaeus, the European hedgehog.

SEVEN: a hedgehog has between 5000 and 7000 spines on its backs and its sides. The spines are modified hairs, about an inch long, hollow, light and strong, and the hedgehog can raise and lower them at will. Each spine lasts approximately a year before it drops out and is replaced. A hedgehog’s face, chest, belly, throat and legs are free of spines but are covered with a coarse, grey-brown fur.

EIGHT: a hedgehog has a small tail.

NINE: hedgehogs are nocturnal and they hunt using their hearing and their sense of smell. Their eyesight is generally very poor, especially in daylight.

TEN: much as we love them, they are anti-social creatures, given to noisy squabbles, so they are rarely seen in groups but if you do see a group of hedgehogs, it is called an array.