Porcupine

About the porcupine

The Old World porcupines, family Hystricidae, are large terrestrial rodents named for the spiny covering that runs over their whole body. They're stout, heavily built animals with blunt, rounded heads and fleshy, mobile snouts, and their coat of thick, cylindrical or flattened spines forms a complete covering rather than growing in among ordinary hairs. Old World porcupines belong to the same infraorder, Hystricognathi, as the New World porcupine family, but the two groups are not especially closely related despite the resemblance.

The family splits into three genera. Hystrix, which includes the crested porcupine and its relatives, has an inflated skull whose nasal cavity is often larger than the brain case, and a short tail tipped with slender, loosely attached quills that rattle when the animal moves — most porcupines wag their tails to make this noise louder when threatened. The crested porcupine (Hystrix cristata) is found across southern Europe and North and West Africa, and is replaced by the Cape porcupine in southern and central Africa and by the Malayan and Indian porcupines in India, the Middle East, and parts of Asia. Several smaller, crestless species live in northeast India and the Malay region. Atherurus, the brush-tailed porcupines, are much smaller, with long tails tipped in bundles of flattened spines; one species lives in the Malay region and another, the African brush-tailed porcupine, in Central and West Africa, where it is often hunted for meat. The third genus, Trichys, holds a single species, the long-tailed porcupine of Borneo.

Old World porcupines share a set of distinctive traits: imperfectly rooted cheek teeth, imperfect collarbones, a cleft upper lip, rudimentary first front toes, smooth soles, and six teats arranged along the sides of the body. Their powerful gnawing incisors and lack of canine teeth are typical of rodents generally, but a wide gap, or diastema, between the front and cheek teeth lets them draw their lips inward while gnawing, and their chewing muscles route through the infraorbital foramen in a way that makes their bite unusually efficient.

Behavior and diet

Old World porcupines are herbivorous, feeding on fruit, roots, and bulbs; some species also gnaw on dry bones, which may serve as a source of calcium. When threatened, a porcupine's main defense is its spines: most species wag their tails to rattle their quills and scare off predators, and the African brush-tailed porcupine can raise sharp quills up to 40 cm (16 in) long on its back and sides.

Reproduction follows a fairly consistent pattern across the family. Females give birth once a year, typically to one or two young (rarely three), after a gestation period of 90 to 112 days depending on the species, in a grass-lined chamber underground within the burrow system. Young are born relatively well developed, with spines that are soft at birth but harden within hours. They start eating solid food within two weeks but aren't fully weaned until 13 to 19 weeks old, and they stay with the family colony — sharing the burrow system with parents and siblings from other litters — until they reach sexual maturity around age two. Males in particular help defend the colony from intruders, though both sexes act aggressively toward unrelated porcupines that wander in.

Range and habitat

Old World porcupines range across southern Europe, specifically Italy, and the Levant, most of Africa, South Asia, and Southeast Asia as far east as the island of Flores. Within that broad range, the habits of most species are strictly terrestrial, and their distribution tracks the different genera: Hystrix species dominate from southern Europe and North Africa through the Middle East and South Asia, Atherurus species are split between the Malay region and Central and West Africa, and the single Trichys species is confined to Borneo.

Conservation status

There is no single IUCN Red List status for Old World porcupines, because the IUCN assesses each species in the family Hystricidae separately. The African brush-tailed porcupine is often hunted for its meat.