Hedgehogs

Half-cocked

I have a small infra red camera set up in the garden to watch a hedgehog and a fox that visit nightly - I've even watched them share a meal together, the fox moving aside to allow the hedgehog feed. She obviously knows how prickly the hog is! Just this evening our regular hedgehog was feeding away when it suddenly rolled into a ball and another hedgehog appeared, sniffed our hog and immediately attacked it. Our hog stayed rolled up and the interloper spent a few minutes butting it and rolling it around the garden. Eventualy it gave up and wandered off and a few minutes later our hog unrolled and ran off. Does anyone know if I have witnessed some sort of territorial dispute between 2 males? Who won? Is this usual behaviour? I know the mating season tends to be April/May, so not a courtship ritual.

Kess73

Hedgehogs are not territorial animals and generally can co-exist quite well, even where there is a food supply, but on occasion they can fight on sight, like what you saw. It does not happen a lot, but it is not an unusual piece of behaviour either.


The winner in what you saw, was the attacker, as your regular hog assumed a defensive (and submissive) posture from the get go.

Just as an aside with regards to your fox. If you have a pond or anything like that in your garden, foxes have been known to pick up a rolled hedgehog and then carry them to water. They drop the hog into the water and the hedgehog then has to uncurl to swim (they are good swimmers btw). One the start to swim the fox then bites then on the head to kill them.

Half-cocked

No pond, but I'm planning to dig one soon. Our fox has had plenty of oppertunity to kill the hedgehog if it wanted. The hog doesn't seem afraid of it at all and stays unrolled while the fox shares its dinner.

Feargal as Luimneach

Half-cocked wrote: »

No pond, but I'm planning to dig one soon. Our fox has had plenty of oppertunity to kill the hedgehog if it wanted. The hog doesn't seem afraid of it at all and stays unrolled while the fox shares its dinner.

Get a video and put it up on Youtube, would love to see that!

Judgement Day

It seems that it's not just foxes that put up with hedgehogs as this one was caught eating out of the cat's dish last week.

Half-cocked

Judgement Day wrote: »

It seems that it's not just foxes that put up with hedgehogs as this one was caught eating out of the cat's dish last week.

Great shot! A friend has a hedgehog that comes in through his cat flap to steal the cats food. Here's a link to some poor quality video of my unlikely dining partners:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fW6VpJMlx9c

Half-cocked

Here's a link to the fight I wrote about at the start of the thread:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zsTn2oO3Ucs

Valmont

Why are there so many hedgehogs out and about? There's one that I see most nights out on either my neighbour's or my own front garden. My dog doesn't like it very much at all.

Half-cocked

Good question, we have 3 now, all appeared in the last month. Before that, didn't see any since last Autumn.