A prickly subject

Resembling a jumbo jacket potato on surprisingly long, scurrying legs, the hedgehog is Britain’s favourite mammal. Marianne Taylor takes a closer look beneath its spines

-  Marianne Taylor

NIGHTFALL—and there’s a strange snorting and snuffling in the dark- ened garden. You might wonder what on earth it could be and go exploring with a torch. Your beam catches a rotund little animal, like a jumbo jacket potato on stiff, scurrying legs. It trots along the edge of the herbaceous border at surprising speed, led by that noisy, into-everything nose. A few decades ago, a hedgehog in the garden was nothing out of the ordinary, but, these days, it’s a wonder—something to celebrate.

Our nation’s love for the hedgehog is deeprooted and evidenced in art and literature of all kinds, spanning the centuries. From Mrs Tiggy-Winkle, who disguised herself as a washerwoman in Beatrix Potter’s eponymous tale, to Sonic, the high-speed and heroic blue hedgehog of video-game fame, our repre- sentations of hedgehogs reflect a tremendous cultural affection. This was borne out in 2016, when the hedgehog won a public ‘Britain’s favourite mammal’ vote held by the Royal Society of Biology, garnering 35.9% of the 5,000 votes and crushing its closest competition (the fox, with a mere 15.4%).

Another measure of this fondness is its variety of regional names, such as ‘furze-pig’ and ‘urchin’ (less charmingly, the Irish grain- neog translates as ‘horrible one’). Hedgehogs live in woodland and more open areas with bushes and hedges and in gardens of all sizes, throughout lowland parts of mainland Britain and more sparsely in Ireland.