AROUND now, people are getting a final chance before the winter to see hedgehogs in their gardens.
This animal can look frightening, largely because of its protective, spike-like coat, but it is a harmless creature and, truly, the gardener’s friend.
Because of its protruding spines and distinctive (dare we say cuddly) shape, it is one of the most easily recognised mammals in Ireland.
A defence that all species of hedgehogs possess is the ability to roll into a tight ball, causing all of the spines to point outwards.
Hedgehogs start hibernating in October, or November, and are not seen out again until March, or April. They must eat a lot in the autumn to get fat so as to survive their long winter sleep.
You can see them out looking for food early in the morning, or late in the evening.
The hedgehog was one of the Irish wild animals which featured in Nature Detective, recently published by the Irish Examiner in connection with the Monday Outdoors page.
That publication tells us hedgehogs are called insectivores, but they don’t just eat insects: they also like slugs and worms and include fruit, berries, eggs and even mice, if they can catch them, in their diet as well.
Because it consumes slugs and snails, it is, for that reason, known as the gardener’s friend.
Ironically, however, the large-scale use of chemical pesticides has become a serious threat to the hedgehog, one of nature’s great pest controllers.
Hedgehogs are a powerful form of pest control and a single animal can keep an average garden free of pests by eating up to 200 grams of insects each night. Indeed, it is common throughout Britain to see people luring hedgehogs into their gardens with treats and hedgehog-sized holes in their fences for that very reason.
While the hedgehog is immune to most poisons, it is not immune to them when ingesting insects full of the poison. This causes many hedgehog deaths. If you don’t see hedgehogs in the garden, you might be able to hear them.
They can be noisy animals, emitting a wild scream, like a squealing pig, when they are severely frightened.
According to Dr Terry Flanagan, a regular guest on the popular Mooney Goes Wild radio programme, they are extremely agile animals and are good climbers of walls and fences. If they fall off, they curl into a ball, as they fall, to land unhurt, cushioned by the thick layer of spines.
Hedgehogs can also swim.
However, many have been found drowned in shallow plastic-lined garden ponds due to the steep smooth sides from which they can’t escape.
Hedgehogs are also thought to collect apples in autumn by deliberately rolling on them so that the apples become impaled on their spines. These can then be carried off to be eaten or stored. Hedgehogs are also known to produce a mass of saliva, which they spread over their spines, a process called "anointing".
The purpose of this is still not fully understood.
It has been claimed that hedgehogs suck milk from cows.
Apparently, hedgehogs like milk and they do frequent cow fields, but they are far too small to reach the teats of cows, unless the cows are lying down. However, the teats are very large and the hedgehog has a small mouth with sharp teeth.
Dr Flanagan says what is most likely is that when the cow lies down, milk tends to flow from an overfull udder and could be lapped up by a foraging hedgehog. He also says hedgehogs build their nests in garden rubbish and gardeners should be careful when burning such rubbish.
In common with many other wild animals, large numbers of hedgehogs are also killed by traffic on our roads.
There are no exact figures on numbers of hedgehogs killed on Irish roads, but mortality rates are definitely high.
While hedgehogs don’t appear to be doing any harm to animals, or humans in Ireland, they have become a pest in New Zealand and some of the Scottish islands, causing damage to native species including insects, snails and ground nesting birds, particularly shore birds. Hedgehogs are believed to be on Earth for 50 million years and have not changed too much in that time.
Scientists say they have changed little over the last 15 million years. Like many of the first mammals, they have adapted to a nocturnal, insect-eating way of life.
a d v e r t i s e m e n t
This appeared in the printed version of the Irish Examiner Monday, October 12, 2009
