A Precious Porcupette
22d 2h ago by lemmy.world/u/anon6789 in animals
Prepared for a Porcupette!
An infant North American Porcupine is in care after rescuers found it orphaned on a roadway in Oil City, PA. Having successfully raised and released another orphaned porcupine in 2024, the team at Tamarack has a solid treatment plan to care for this unique patient.
Young porcupines are called porcupettes, and we estimate that this porcupette was only a few days old when it was rescued. Thankfully, its examination showed it was uninjured, despite being found on the road and weighing just under a pound.
As you can imagine, caring for a rodent with 30,000 barbed quills comes with some unique challenges. Fortunately, porcupines do not throw their quills, as old tales suggest. Instead, quills are loosely attached and act as a detachable defense mechanism. To prevent quills from accidentally detaching during care, our rehabilitators wear vinyl gloves and aprons that do not snag the quills. At birth, porcupines do have all of their quills, but they are soft to protect the mother. The quills harden and sharpen within a few hours after birth.
This porcupette enjoys a species-specific formula every few hours. Since admission, it has put on weight and remains in stable condition.
Porcupines give birth to a single baby roughly every other year, and young porcupettes will stay with their mothers until they are 5 months old. We look forward to sharing updates as this porcupette's journey in care continues.
From the videos & stories I've seen, porcupines seem to be rather friendly, even affectionate types.
This of course seems roughly common in the ballpark of moving from small-scale to large scale mammals, with porcupines being the 3rd-largest rodents after capys and beavers. Still, those others routinely seem more indifferent than actually cuddly like porcus. I wonder if their quills are a factor here, in that all of their contact with each other and other animals is necessarily risky. Probably I'm reading too much in to it as a naked ape, but I wonder...
I've fed a big African porcupine (Crested porcupine maybe?) and he was the sweetest thing. He tried to hop up on my lap, which made me a bit nervous, but he was just eating the banana slices I was giving him. He'd quick slice through the peel with those rodent teeth and then eat the fruit.
The big butt quills felt like the rachis (the shaft of a feather, the front bristles felt a bit like that fake Easter grass or astroturf, and I remember his tiny little ears being one of the softest things ever!
His name was Vince and he lived with the hippos at Adventure Aquarium in NJ. He was a total sweetheart and a nice surprise I got to meet him and feed him and give him scritches.
Nice! And were you wearing protective gear and so forth?
Nay, probably shorts at the time, hence my concern with the lap jumping. Long pants, I probably would have allowed it. 😆