Feb 2nd is National Hedgehog Day 2025!
To celebrate this, I’m going to share some amazing hedgehog related facts that you can use to amaze your friends and family with your astounding hedgehog knowledge!
Anointing is when a hedgehog covers their spines in saliva, they usually do this when there is a new scent around them. So when they are put in a new environment they tend to anoint, or if you are holding a hoglet and you have a watch or bracelet on they will bite the strap and will then anoint. Watching a hedgehog anoint is amazing, they almost turn themselves in two so that their very long tongue can reach the spines on their back, almost behind their heads. When they are hoglets they will do this whilst you are holding them.
Hedgehogs can swim and are quite good at it! But if they fall in to your garden pond, they ideally would like to get out by using a ramp – this can be a plank of wood placed at the edge of the pond, at not too steep an incline so they can just walk up the ramp and out of the pond.
Hedgehogs usually give birth any time from April to September, rearing a litter of four to five hoglets. However, only two or three usually survive. Mother hedgehogs tend to abandon or eat hoglets if disturbed. This is why it is so important to make sure that during baby season you keep your dogs on leads if they are likely to disturb any nesting hedgehogs in your garden. Once they reach three to four weeks old, wild hoglets first leave their nests to forage with their mother. Typically, hoglets will forage with their mother for 10 days before wandering off on their own.
It may sound like one of the more unlikely hedgehog facts, but some travelling peoples once ate them for sustenance. To cook them, they would roll the hogs in clay and bake them in a fire. Once the clay was stripped off after cooking, the spines and hair would come off. In his 1783 cookbook The London Art of Cookery, experimental chef John Farley even featured a dish of hedgehogs prepared with almonds.
As an omnivorous species, hedgehogs usually feast on garden grub such as insects and less frequently snails. However, hedgehogs have also been observed to eat frogs, snakes, eggs, and carrion. If no live prey is available, hedgehogs can also forage for mushrooms, roots, berries, and other fruits.
Hedgehogs have between 5000 – 7000 quills which are modified hairs
Hedgehogs are fairly vocal creatures, making a wide array of sounds with different meanings. While looking for food, hedgehogs usually grunt and snuffle like pigs. During mating season, they chuff like a train to attract mates. Baby hedgehogs chirp to indicate hunger, while adult hedgehogs scream, hiss, or click to display aggression.
Hedgehogs average life span is between 3 – 6 years old. They can die from internal parasites, or cancer, but the most frequent killer of hedgehogs are human inventions such as cars, netting and new builds which have encroached into hedgehog habitats and impact on their ability to forage, leading them to have to cross more roads to find suitable foraging land.
If you can provide hedgehog highways (hedgehog sized holes) in the fences this will allow them to sit have access to gardens to find food either the insects in your garden, or if you choose to support feed them – wet or dry cat food.
Hedgehogs need our help to continue to survive our ever changing environment. If you want more information about helping hedgehogs please either send us an email on hello@littlestwildlifehotel.org.uk or contact the British Hedgehog Preservation Society www.britishhedgehogs.org.uk
If you are interested in volunteering with us, use this link to register your interest, as we move towards Spring we get increasingly busier and will need all hands on deck.