Most People Don't Know These Hedgehog Facts

Hello and welcome back to a shot of wildlife. In this video I'm going to tell you 8 fascinating facts about Hedgehogs. The most obvious place to start when speaking about Hedgehogs would be their spines. Each animal has between 5 and 7 thousand of these which cover the top of their bodies. Their faces, legs and undersides are all covered in soft fur instead. Hedgehog spines are made of the same material as hair, keratin, but as the spines are hollow and denser they are much sturdier than hair. They have the ability to control which way their spines are pointing and can point them away from their bodies when threatened but also hold them more flattened when they are relaxed. One thing that's still unexplained about Hedgehog spines is quite fascinating, they glow under ultraviolet light, and so far no one knows why. Hedgehogs are often thought of as slow and perhaps even clumsy creatures that amble around and don't go very far, but that's not the case. They can roam up to 2 miles per night in search of food, which is equivalent to a human covering 14 miles. They are not very slow either, hedgehogs can sprint for short distances and have been recorded running at more than 5 miles per hour. Whilst their eyesight is really poor, both their hearing and sense of smell is phenomenal. They can hear into the ultrasonic range and locate their prey and potential danger by listening to it move. They can hear insects and worms moving beneath leaf litter and even underground, and their sense of smell is so good that when they can't hear their prey, they can probably sniff it out. They can smell worms through more than an inch of soil. One of the hedgehogs most well known traits is their hibernation, in fact they're one of the only land mammals in the UK that truly hibernate alongside dormice. To do this, they slow their heartbeats down from around 190 beats per minute to less than 20. They also drop their body temperature from around 35 degrees to less than 5. This helps them to conserve energy, but they'll still lose around a third of their body weight whilst dormant. Hedgehogs have a very strange habit when they come across a new scent or potential type of food, they'll lick or chew it into a foam in their mouths and then lick this foam over their own spines. This is known as self-anointing and whilst there are several guesses as to why they do it, no one knows for sure. The possible reasons include to mask their scent from predators and to spread toxins or bad tastes over their spines. In the UK, their diet mostly consists of invertebrates such as beetles, worms, slugs and snails, but they'll also feed on carrion, ground nesting birds, eggs and chicks and even small mammals if they manage to catch them. People often feed hedgehogs in their garden, but it's worth noting that they are lactose intolerant so shouldn't be given milk, peanuts are not good for their teeth and too many mealworms can cause a disease that makes their bones fragile. If you're going to feed them, a simple bowl of water and either a meat-based cat food or special hedgehog mix is best. Unlike most mammals, male hedgehogs have higher average lifespans than females. Males typically live for around 2.1 years whilst females only live for an average of 1.6. However, they can live a lot longer than this, with the oldest known wild hedgehog surviving for 16 years. Now you might be wondering how you can age a hedgehog and there is a unique answer to this. Because of their hibernation, hedgehogs grow at different rates throughout the year, which creates lines on their jaw bones. These can be used in a similar way to the rings inside a tree trunk to tell how many years a hedgehog has lived for. Sadly, no video about hedgehogs would be complete without mentioning their ongoing decline. Their numbers have dropped by about 35% over the past 25 years and by more than 15% in just the last decade. This decline is most prominent in the countryside, whilst in some urban areas their populations seem to have mostly stabilised and are even going up slightly in some places. One of their leading causes of death is starvation and from getting hit by cars, both of which are probably exacerbated by habitat loss. I'm sure a few people watching will be expecting me to mention badgers here, and whilst it is true that badgers do predate hedgehogs, their decline is just as sharp in places where there are no badgers as it is where badgers are quite common, so it can't be down to them. And how was that? Did you learn anything new or did you already know all of those hedgehog facts? If you enjoyed this video then you'll probably like this one on the screen. Thanks for watching and I'll see you next time.