Do Porcupines Live Together? If so how many?

Tell Me About the Porcupine

Porcupines are large rodents covered with over thirty thousand prickly quills. The stiff quills cover their bodies everywhere except their soft fur-covered stomachs. The fur is brown, yellow to black.

They are the second-largest rodent globally, second to the capybara, which is almost double their weight. The average porcupine weighs only about 20 pounds, and their length is about twenty-five to thirty-six inches full-grown. Though the African crested porcupine, the largest porcupine species, however, can be as large as sixty-six pounds and has quills that can be a foot long and as thick as a straw.

The porcupine’s feet have four toes on the front and five toes on the back. Each toe has large curved claws that help the porcupine climb trees, dig holes for dens and get the food they like to eat. Porcupines are herbivores that love to eat leaves, twigs, bark, and green plants, and their claws help them do this.

The pad of their foot is relatively soft and hairless. The porcupine has an interesting tail called a prehensile tail, which is like a third arm and can wrap around a tree branch, allowing them to be stable climbers. They tend to be nocturnal, but you can occasionally find them wandering around during the daytime.

They also tend to be solitary animals, which changes during childbirth and in the cold winter months.

Are there a lot of different species of Porcupines?

Around the globe, there are 28 different species of porcupines, and some of them live very differently than the other species. The species are further divided into two families of porcupines. The Old-World porcupines of the family Hystricidae and New World porcupines of the family Erethizontidae.

These families behave very differently from each other. The Old-World porcupine tends to be a land or terrestrial animal, spending its days foraging on the ground. They are some of the largest porcupines.

The African Crested Porcupine and the Cape porcupine are both parts of the family of the Old-World Porcupines, and both tend to live in a family group. They also … Read the rest of the story.

from Nature Nibble https://ift.tt/XuO3vjC