Strange Yet Lovable Animal

Strange yet Lovable Animal

by

sarah dawson

I was thinking about animals that are quite strange to look at. I searched the Internet and found many of them. But, the strangest, at least to me, that I was able to search out from the heap of the search results on the Google was the hedgehog. Hedgehog appeared quite curious to me to study about it in detail. A hedgehog is a spiny mammal belonging to the subfamily Erinaceinae. The subfamily Erinaceinae belongs to the order Erinaceomorpha. The spine covering on the body of a hedgehog is the most curious thing.

There are many species of

Hedgehog

and they are found throughout the parts of Asia, Europe, Africa, and have been introduced in New Zealand. There are no species indigenous to Australia. Also, no living species are present in the Americas. These animals share remote ancestry with shrews. These mammalian animals are active at night time. They feed on insects amongst other foods. The spines are hollow hairs without barbs and are stiff in nature due to the presence of the keratin. The hedgehog sheds its baby spines and these are replaced with the adult spines. A sick hedgehog may also lose its spines. Spines are used for the purpose of protection.

In the United Kingdom (UK), badgers predate on these insect eating animals. Population is dropping in the parts of Britain where badgers are huge in numbers. Many societies and animal rescue organizations have appeared in the UK that have the main goal of preventing hedgehogs from getting into the territories crowded with the badgers. On the contrary, there are areas in New Zealand where Hedgehog is itself regarded as a pest and efforts are being put to control their population. In New Zealand, it has proved to be a devastating animal for species such as insects, shore birds, snails, etc. The lack of any natural predator is the main reason that has made this animal quite annoying. Killing of hedgehogs has resulted in outrage from animal welfare groups and societies. For an example, when efforts were made to eliminate these spiny animals from the colonies rich with birds population in Benbecula island located in the Atlantic Ocean, many animal welfare societies revolted worldwide.

So, I found hedgehog a strange but lovable animal. My best animal is cat. I have two cats as pets. Before ending this article, I would like you to inform that if you are an animal lover, you may refer to online resources like

Adidarwinian Health, Biology, Science

or watch out Animal Planet TV channel. If you will like this information on hedgehog, I will feel great as a writer.

Sarah Dawson is a

health, biology and science

content writer. She has written many scientific articles on various topics.

Article Source:

ArticleRich.com