A famously prickly attitude?

Richard Collins says a new book dispels some myths about hedgehogs.

ISAIAH BERLIN claimed that writers and thinkers are either foxes or hedgehogs. Foxes, such as Shakespeare and Joyce, have many ideas. Hedgehogs, like Plato and Aristotle, have only one, but it’s big. The hedgehog’s big idea is to put safety first. As with humans, fear makes the hair stand on a hog’s head — about 7,000 spines, modified hairs, bristle upwards. The armoured skin is pulled, like a sleeping bag, over the vulnerable parts of the animal’s body. Even new-born hedgehogs have spines. When threatened, a youngster may jump suddenly, giving an inquisitive dog a painful prod.

In A Prickly Affair, My Life with Hedgehogs, Hugh Warwick dispels some of the myths about our armoured friends. It’s not true, for example, that hedgehogs are slow. They are good climbers, travel several kilometres each night, and can move fast when it is needed. Nor do hedgehogs have more fleas than other mammals; the shimmering effect of light on the spines can give the impression of infestation.