Daytime Hedgehog

[HedgehogRescue]

Water is better

Agreed. All milk contains lactose, even goat's milk. It is lower in lactose but not by a lot. If a hedgehog has an intestinal issue then any milk is going to make it worse. Water only please.

[dampflippers]

Good point about carrying water with you. Also take a small dish or bowl.

Everyone here can help today by putting out water in their front and back gardens. Do it now! Before the world cup starts!

[mbaldw]

Re navigation: hedgehogs don’t mark out territories with scent or urine like other mammals. I’ve always understood that they leave a faint scent trail as their undersides brush against the ground as they move about. According to wildlifeinformation.org, it is thought that hedgehogs rely mainly on smell and hearing for navigation.

Just to add to what Hedgehoggy has already mentioned, radio-tracking studies (which show hogs moving freely about their range) imply that they may possess a fairly detailed cognitive map of their familiar area. Indeed, early hedgehog biologists Waldemar Lindemann and Konrad Herter have both commented on the impressive long-term memory that these animal appear to posses. It seems that memory, scent and sound are probably all involved and in his 1996 opus Hedgehogs, Nigel Reeves writes:

"It is likely that hedgehogs navigate using a combination of general olfactory cues (maybe including their own body odour trails) and auditory cues, such as rustling trees or the sounds of running water. Lindemann (1951) considered that visual cues might also be important; from my own field observations I feed that hedgehogs could easily be using the silhouetted shapes of trees, bushes and buildings to help them navigate."

Interestingly, Dr Reeve also hints at the possibility of kinaesthesis (i.e. where the number of turns you make and the distances you travel are mentally integrated) in hedgehogs, along with the ability to navigate by magnetic or celestial cues. These suggestions were based on the case of the Russian 'homing hedgehog' called Topa who, in 1979, apparently returned to a carer's house some 77 km (48 miles) from where she was translocated! At the time Dr Reeve wrote the book, and to the best of my knowledge since then, no kinaesthetic or celestial sense has been experimentally documented in hedgehogs.

Cheers,
Marc.

[HedgehogRescue]

Sincerely hope the Uist hogs aren't trying to swim back.