40 Fun Facts About Porcupines

Which popular belief about porcupine quills, often repeated in stories and on screen, is actually a myth?

The idea that they can be shot is the myth: quills are only loosely attached, so they come away on contact when a predator touches the animal or its lashing tail.

What is the name for a baby porcupine, born with soft quills that soon harden?

A porcupette usually arrives alone: North American porcupines give birth to a single young, which can climb and forage after about two weeks.

Porcupine quills are modified hairs made of which protein, also found in human hair and fingernails?

Keratin forms every quill, and a muscle at the base of each one lets a porcupine stand its spines on end when it is excited or alarmed.

Roughly how many quills cover the body of an adult North American porcupine?

About 30,000 quills cover everything except the underbelly, face and feet, and they double as insulation through the winter.

The word porcupine comes from Latin and French roots meaning a thorny version of which animal?

Pig is the root, from the Latin porcus joined to spina for spine, and a regional American nickname for the animal is still quill pig.

Which cat-sized member of the weasel family is one of the few predators to hunt porcupines?

The fisher bites again and again at a porcupine's unprotected face, and where fishers were wiped out, porcupine numbers climbed and timber damage followed.

The largest porcupine is the third-largest living rodent, behind the beaver and which South American animal?

The capybara is the largest living rodent, and like New World porcupines it belongs to the caviomorphs, rodents whose ancestors are thought to have rafted across the Atlantic.

Porcupine meatballs, a Great Depression staple, get their spiky look from which ingredient poking out?

Rice goes into the ground beef uncooked, then swells and pokes out as the meatballs simmer, traditionally in canned tomato soup.

Which animated musical film features Ash, a punk-rock porcupine voiced by Scarlett Johansson?

Sing follows Ash as she breaks up with her cheating boyfriend Lance and then wins over the crowd with a rock song she wrote herself.

Why do North American porcupines so often end up stabbed by their own quills?

They fall out of trees while stretching for tender buds at the tips of branches, and a fatty antibiotic coating on the quills helps stop the wounds becoming infected.

Which German philosopher used porcupines huddling for warmth as a parable about human closeness?

Schopenhauer published the tale in 1851: the animals crowd together against the cold, prick one another, and settle on keeping a polite distance.

The crested porcupine is the only porcupine species found wild in Europe, living in which country?

Italy has them on the mainland and in Sicily, while the rest of the species lives across North Africa and much of sub-Saharan Africa.

The hollow tail quills of a crested porcupine make a warning hiss often compared to which reptile?

A rattlesnake is the usual comparison: the quill tips are broad, hollow and thin-walled, so a shake of the tail sets them buzzing.

North American porcupines chew boots, tool handles and plywood because they crave which nutrient?

Salt is scarce in a diet of plants, so porcupines gnaw anything carrying sodium, from sweat-soaked gloves to the adhesives in plywood.

When a North American porcupine raises its quills, the white stripe on its back mimics which animal?

The skunk look works because most of a porcupine's predators hunt at night and are colour-blind, so bold black and white is the clearest warning on offer.

When its warnings fail, how does a crested porcupine typically charge at an attacker?

Rear end first is the rule, because that aims the thickest quills at the enemy, and such charges are known to have killed lions and leopards.

According to San Diego Zoo, a family of porcupines goes by which fitting collective name?

A prickle can be a real household: young Old World porcupines share the burrow with their parents and siblings until they are about two years old.

Old World and New World porcupines each developed quills independently, an example of which process?

Convergent evolution explains the lookalikes: New World porcupines are closer kin to several other rodent families than they are to Old World porcupines.

Porcupines must keep gnawing because, as in all rodents, which teeth keep growing throughout life?

Incisors in rodents grind against each other into a chisel edge, and porcupines have no canine teeth at all, leaving a gap behind the front pair.

In winter, North American porcupines survive mainly on conifer needles and which other food?

Bark, especially the soft inner layer, carries them through the cold months, and heavy feeding on a single tree can damage or even kill it.

Porcupines of the genus Coendou grip branches in South American forests with which unspined feature?

A prehensile tail curls its tip upward around branches, and on the Brazilian porcupine it accounts for about half of the animal's total length.

Crested porcupines hoard thousands of which objects, gnawing them for calcium and to sharpen their teeth?

Bones found on night-time foraging trips are carried home and stored in an underground chamber or cave, sometimes by the thousand.

Porcupine quillwork was a major Indigenous decorative art before the introduction of which rival material?

Glass beads took over much of the decoration once done with dyed quills, in an art form that is unique to North America.

Lakota women traditionally gathered porcupine quills for craftwork by throwing which item over the animal?

A blanket did the job safely: the startled porcupine left its quills stuck in the cloth, ready to be picked out, dyed and stitched onto leather.

Which French king adopted the porcupine as his personal badge, displaying it on buildings and cannons?

Louis XII presented his kingdom as a porcupine, a supposedly invincible beast, and carved porcupines still mark his wing of the château at Blois.

The Porcupine Mountains, nicknamed the Porkies, rise beside Lake Superior in which US state?

Michigan's Upper Peninsula holds them, and the Ojibwa are said to have named the range because its outline resembled a crouching porcupine.

The Porcupine herd, known for one of the longest land migrations of any mammal, is made up of which animals?

Caribou of this herd trek between inland winter forests and calving grounds on the Beaufort Sea coast, a route the Gwich'in people built their communities around.

During courtship, a male North American porcupine brings the female into season by spraying her with what?

Urine is the signal, and the pair then mate on the ground with their skin tightened and quills held flat to avoid injury.

North American porcupines can learn which tricky things and still remember them a hundred days later?

Complex mazes suit a strong memory, which sits oddly with the rest of the picture: the animal is nearsighted, slow-moving and solitary.

Which DreamWorks film features Lou and Penny, a porcupine couple voiced by Eugene Levy and Catherine O'Hara?

Over the Hedge also gives the couple triplets, and it is the three young porcupines who drive the van back to the neighbourhood at the climax.

Ereth, a porcupine of Dimwood Forest, protects a young deer mouse from an owl in which novel by Avi?

Poppy sends its heroine to face the owl Mr. Ocax armed with one of Ereth's quills, and Ereth later got a book of his own in the same series.

Which psychoanalyst said he was visiting America in 1909 to glimpse a wild porcupine?

Sigmund Freud listed seeing a wild porcupine ahead of giving his lectures, and years later he cited a philosopher's porcupine parable in a footnote.

Which egg-laying mammal of Australia, sometimes called the spiny anteater, resembles a porcupine?

The echidna lays a single leathery egg into her pouch, and the hatchling, known as a puggle, stays there until its spines begin to grow.

Porcupinefish, named for their sharp spines, make them stick straight out by doing what when threatened?

They inflate their bodies by swallowing water or air, and some species back that up with a potent toxin in their internal organs.

Which wild cat has greatly reduced porcupine numbers in some mountain forests of the Great Basin?

The cougar treats a few quills as the price of a meal: some have been found with dozens lodged in their gums to no ill effect.

Besides the golden eagle, which owl is the only bird known to prey on North American porcupines?

The great horned owl takes the risk with good reason to hesitate: quills left in a predator can injure or kill it even after a successful hunt.

Ancestors of the North American porcupine walked north from South America after which land bridge rose?

The Isthmus of Panama rose about three million years ago, and Erethizon was the only member of its group to survive north of Mexico.

Cape porcupines, which may share up to six burrows, typically live in which social arrangement?

Mated pairs raise their young together and jointly defend a shared territory, although each adult usually goes out to forage alone.

The barbed tips of porcupine quills have inspired research into better designs for which medical items?

Surgical staples modelled on the barbs should hold firmly yet do less damage to skin when removed, and hypodermic needles are being rethought the same way.

New World porcupines are caviomorphs, a South American rodent group that also includes which soft-furred pet?

The chinchilla is a fellow caviomorph, which makes it a closer relative of a New World porcupine than any Old World porcupine is.