porcupine facts national geographic

Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. When they find dinner, stingrays crush their meal using strong jaws. Latest Stories & Galleries. March 1, 2017 - A leopard gets itself into a prickly situation when it tries to hunt down a porcupine.Tourists on safari in Kruger National Park in South Africa captured footage of the big cat facing the quilled defenses of its prey.The leopard is persistent and continues to give chase, forcing the porcupine to choose whether to stand its ground or make a crafty escape. Jeff Foott/DCL. Arboreal animals, they are also excellent climbers and spend the majority of their time in trees. National Geographic Maps Prey for stingrays includes clams, oysters, shrimps, crabs, and mussels. From fawns to fry, eyases to ephyra, use this GeoStory to travel the world of adorable animal babies. The largest baby animal in the world is the blue whale calf. A fish? Feb 1, 2016 - Fast Facts: PorcupineScientific name: Erethizon dorsatum Average weight: 5.5 kg (male) 4.5 kg (female)Average height: 60 to 100 cmAverage lifespan: 10 years or moreDid you know?When baby porcupines are born their quills are soft, but within an hour they harden.Physiology These magnificent creatures come in all shapes and sizes and live in a number of different environments. Come back soon for more updates, games, and videos! Customize your avatar OK. The Malayan porcupine (Hystrix brachyura) photographed here in its native range at a wildlife facility in Singapore) is a species that inhabits forests and other habitats where it can build a suitable burrow from India and Nepal, east to China, and south through the Malay Peninsula, and even on the islands of Borneo and Sumatra. Its coat of 30,000 sharp spines may help protect the porcupine from predators, but it does nothing for its love life: fellow porcupines are not immune to the sting of the quills. We upload videos every #WildlifeWednesday, so tune in! Most hedgehogs can fit in an adult's hand. 2010-09-10. Key Facts & Information Physical Features. When the quills enter the skin of a predator, they work their way further into the skin at a rate of 1 mm an hour. They typically weigh from 5 to 56 ounces (155 to 1,584 grams), depending on the species. Published in Leopards acquire a taste for porcupines. Two other formerly recognized Neotropical tree porcupine genera, Echinoprocta and Sphiggurus, have been subsumed into Coendou, since Sphiggurus was shown by genetic studies to be polyphyletic, while Echinoprocta nested within Coendou.. Characteristics. "PORCUPINES." To survive in such low temperatures, these brilliant birds have special adaptations – they have large stores of insulating body fat and several layers of scale-like feathers that protect them from icy winds. The porcupine's most famous featurethe quillis hollow, 2 to 3 inches (5 to 7 centimeters) in length, and lightly attached to the porcupine's skin. 5. A porcupine has approximately 30,000 quills on its body. Porcupines can live a long time. The hedgehog was named because of its peculiar foraging methods. Also known as blowfish, these clumsy swimmers fill their elastic stomachs with huge amounts of water (and sometimes air) and blow themselves up to several times their normal size. Porcupine . Natural history, News. A poisonous pill? Porcupine, any of 25 species of large, herbivorous, quill-bearing rodents active from early evening to dawn. ZAMBIA IS OPEN: 3 … Porcupine In Madison Range | Photo: D. Lennon. See the fact file below for more information on the porcupine or alternatively, you can download our 26-page Porcupine worksheet pack to utilise within the classroom or home environment. The prehensile-tailed porcupines or coendous (genus Coendou) are found in Central and South America. Although there are numerous different species of porcupines in existence, only one roams throughout the United States, according to the National Geographic. Porcupines are covered in about 30,000 quills. From: "Saved by Windows Internet Explorer 7" Subject: Porcupine, Porcupine Profile, Facts, Information, Photos, Pictures, Sounds, Habitats, Reports, News - National Geographic Date: Thu, 26 Feb 2009 20:03:58 -0500 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/related; type="text/html"; boundary="----=_NextPart_000_05F3_01C9984D.5C7F7350" X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE … Of large, herbivorous, quill-bearing rodents active from early evening to dawn have two to six at... Encounters them 2012. ↑ `` North American porcupine – Erethizon dorsatum ( Linnaeus, 1758 ) '' to low! 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