Saturday, September 17, 2005

Porcupine Babies

Oh, my.

sarcasm alert! Aren't they just darling?

A little web research leads me to believe these are actually hedgehog babies. See information here, here, here, and here.

The reason I was doing the web research is that it occurred to me to wonder what agony the mother porcupine hedgehog had to endure while giving birth to these well-defended babies. It turns out (for both porcupines and hedgehogs) that the babies are born furred and spiked, but the spikes are "pliable" when born. They harden in a few hours and the little tykes are thus fully defended.

Thank goodness!




No comments:

Post a Comment