• Question: how spiky can a hedgehog be??

    Asked by gorilla75 to Vincent, Luis, Joe, Joanna, Hannah on 22 Jun 2016.
    • Photo: Hannah Grist

      Hannah Grist answered on 22 Jun 2016:

      Depends on how you touch them!

      Hedgehog look really spiky, but a lot of the time they don’t stick their spikes up. It’s a bit like the hairs on your arms: they can be lying flat or standing up

      If it feels threatened, a hedgehog rolls into a ball and sticks the spines up, and then it can feel pretty painful. A hedgehog can have up to 8000 individual spikes!

    • Photo: Joanna Bagniewska

      Joanna Bagniewska answered on 23 Jun 2016:

      Hedgehogs can be pretty spiky, but did you know that some of them have a skin disease and can lose all of their spikes? They end up looking like potatoes with a face. They need special care until their spikes grow back, because they are not able to survive in the wild on their own…

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