AFRICAN CRESTED PORCUPINES

Not long ago, the zoo here in Kansas City got two African Crested Porcupines.  One of them is named Titon, and he is 1-1/2 years old.  His brother is named Bic, and he is one year old.  Mom went to the zoo to see these porcupines, and also to see a bunch of other animals.  When she saw the two porcupines, they were taking a nap, all snuggled up together.  You might wonder how a porcupine can snuggle, and I will tell you:  very carefully!  Hahahaha!  Anyway, Titon and Bic were sleeping close together, side by side, so I guess you could call that snuggling.  Personally, I think there are a lot of things I would snuggle with before I would snuggle with a porcupine!

Anyway, I decided that since this type of porcupine comes from Africa, where my distant cousins, the basenjis live, maybe I should learn more about them.  So I did some research, and I found out that the scientific name for crested porcupines is Hystrix cristata.  The North African crested porcupine is the largest porcupine on earth and one of the largest rodents.  It is between 25 and 29 inches long, and weighs from 18 to 51 pounds.

The reason this porcupine is called "crested" is because it can raise up the quills on its back to make a crest if it feels threatened.  Also it can rattle its tail, kind of like a rattlesnake does, and all the quills on its tail will make a noise to warn everybody to stay away.

There are crested porcupines in Italy, North Africa, and sub-Saharan Africa.  They can adapt to almost any kind of area, including deserts, forests, plantations, and mountains.  They like to live in places like caves, holes in the rocks, or burrows that they dig.  A female crested porcupine usually has one litter a year.  She has one or two babies, and they weigh only 3% of what she does.  The babies' spines are soft at first, but by one week of age, they have started hardening, which is when the baby porcupines leave the den.

The mom and dad porcupines raise the babies together, and everybody lives in a little family group.  Porcupines go out at night to look for food, and what they like to eat is mostly plant stuff such as roots, bulbs, and crops.  But sometimes they also eat insects, small vertebrates, and carrion.  Porcupines like to collect bones and carry them back to their den.  Then they chew on the bones to sharpen their incisors and to get calcium.

If a crested porcupine feels threatened, like for instance by a lion who is looking for a porcupine lunch, the porcupine will stamp its feet, raise its crest, and run backwards at its attackers.  Some people think that porcupines can shoot their quills, but this is not true.  What they do is run the quills into the attacker, and then the quills come loose and stick in the other animal.  This can be very bad because the quills are barbed, and they are hard to get out.  So if you get stuck, you might get an infection and die.  Or else you might starve to death because you can't hunt.

There are a lot of crested porcupines still left in the world, so there is no danger that they will go extinct anytime soon.  I think they are kind of weird and interesting to look at, but I definitely want to keep a good, safe distance from them!