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Tuesday, November 27, 2012
Saturday, November 17, 2012
Reproduction
Reproduction
While males are looking for receptibe females, they make their home vigger 5 times bigger taht the normal size, to attract the females.Males are ready to reproduce at 24 months and females at 12 months.
The male splashes the female with urine, then the male mounts with the female in front and the male on the side.
If the female is not ready and the male splashed her with urine, then she shakes of the urine and leaves.
During the intercourse, the female curls her tail over her back to cover her quills.
well ya see when a boy porcupine and a girl porcupine like each other VERRYYYY much they move in together and then they call the stork
well.... probably the same way dogs do. boy porcupine climbs on top of girl porcupine, then some weeks or months later, baby porcupines arrive.... simple
Geographic Range: The common porcupine is found in boreal North America from Alaska to Labrador and southward to northern Mexico. Erethizon is also found in the Lake States and New England. In the north-central region, it is found only in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota.
Physical Characteristics: Mass: 3 to 7 kg. The masses above are normal for most porcupines. Large males, however, may weigh up to 18 kg. There is considerable variation in the color of a porcupine's hair throughout its geographic range. Coloration of common porcupines is usually dark brown. The dorsal region of the porcupine is covered with thick, sharp, barbed quills, which are distributed among stiff guard hairs and wooly underfur. The number of quills on each porcupine may exceed 30,000. The quills are used for defense purposes. Each one of the modified hairs is tipped with microscopic barbs that cause the quill to be continually driven into the muscle of predators. There are no quills located on the underparts of the common porcupine. Quills have yellowish to white bases and are dark at the tips. The longest quills are located on the animal's rump; the shortest are found on the cheeks. Common porcupines have robust bodies with small heads, moderately small ears, short legs, and a short thick tail. The animal's feet are heavy with naked soles. The front feet have four toes while the hind feet have five toes. Each toe has a strong curved claw. Most females have two pairs of mammary glands, but occasionally a specimen can be found with three pairs of mammary glands.
Food Habits: The common porcupine is entirely vegetarian. A major shift in its food habits takes place between the winter and summer months. The winter diet consists mainly of evergreen needles and the cambium layer and inner bark of trees. During the spring and summer, the common porcupine eats buds, tender twigs, roots, stems, leaves, flowers, berries, nuts, and other vegetation. Common porcupines are also known to gnaw on bones and antlers from the ground due to their high mineral content .
Reproduction: Reproduction occurs in the fall or early winter. Females may be polyestrous and recycle in 25 to 30 days if fertilization does not occur at the time of ovulation. Ovulation is spontaneous and may alternate between the left and right ovaries. The female porcupine is in heat for eight to twleve hours. Males fight for receptive females. An elaborate courtship takes place involving extensive vocalization, a comical sort of dance, and the male showering the female with urine. The testes of male porcupines descend into scrotal pouches during late August and early September. Spermatogenesis reaches its highest level during October. After mating, the female repels the male and a copulation plug is formed. The gestation period lasts between 205 and 217 days with the young being born from April to June. Litters normally consist of a single offspring; however, there are rare records of twins. Offspring are precocial with open eyes when born. Senses of smell and hearing develop as the young grow. The quills of young porcupines are soft at birth but harden within one hour. In the lab, nursing may last several months; but in the wild, young can survive on a diet of vegetation within two weeks of birth. Mothers remain with their young for up to six months. Sexual maturity is reached anywhere from 16 to 24 months.
Behavior Common porcupines are usually solitary; however, some may den together especially in the winter. During winter months, the animals seek refuge in caves, decaying logs, or hollow trees. They do not build nests. They often defend winter feeding trees from other animals. Porcupines do not hibernate, but they often remain in their dens during bad weather. During the summer, porcupines often climb trees to avoid pestering insects. Erethizon dorsatum is generally nocturnal but occasionally forages during the day. Porcupines are not very adventuresome and often use the same dens year after year. Depending on food availability, they may migrate seasonally. They use regular runways through vegetation and snow often leaving a distinct path from their dens to their feeding areas. When approached by predators, the porcupine faces away from its enemy, raises its spines in a threatening gesture, and rapidly lashes out with its barbed tail. The quills of the porcupine are not thrown or shot but easily detached after contact with a predator's flesh. Porcupines have poor vision but good senses of hearing and smell. The voice of the common porcupine has been described as a combination of moans, whines, grunts, squeeks, snorts, and shrieks.
Habitat The common porcupine is primarily found in coniferous forests but is also frequently found in deciduous or mixed forests. Highly adaptable, Erethizon dorsatum may be found in open tundra, rangeland, and deserts. When away from forests, the common porcupine usually remains in vegetated riparian areas. Biomes: tundra, taiga, temperate forest & rainforest, temperate grassland, desert
Economic Importance for Humans
Positive: The common porcupine is generally considered a nuisance; however, some humans consider Erethizon dorsatum edible. The quills of the animal are often used by Native Americans to make quill boxes, jewelry, and other artwork.
Negative: Some humans consider the porcupine to be the most important mammalian forestry pest. Individual animals gnaw woodwork, furniture, tools, saddles, and other objects that have received salt deposits from human perspiration. The common porcupine often causes death of timber and ornamental trees by girdling the bark of the trunk or stripping all of the bark abover the snowline. Their feeding habits also contribute to the injury of orchards and crop damage. Porcupines may also injure domestic animals and transmit diseases.
Conservation Status: no special status
Other Comments: The common porcupine has population cycles that range from twelve to twenty years. A period of about ten years separates the end of a decline and the beginning of a growth phase. Despite its threatening quills, the porcupine is preyed upon by a number of species including humans, fishers, martens, coyotes, and bald eagles. Fishers tend to be the most successful predators due to their technique of flipping the porcupine on its back, exposing the unprotected belly. Common porcupines are reported to be intelligent animals that are capable of learning rapidly. They have good memories, and some humans feel that the animals make interesting pets.
Friday, November 16, 2012
Species
Species
Read more ...
Of the three genera, Hystrix is characterized by an inflated skull, in which the nasal cavity is often considerably larger than the brain-case, and a short tail, tipped with numerous slender-stalked open quills, which make a loud rattling noise whenever the animal moves.
The Crested Porcupine (Hystrix cristata) is a typical representative of the Old World porcupines, and occurs throughout the south of Europe and North and West Africa. It is replaced in South Africa by the Cape Porcupine, H. africaeaustralis, and in India by the Malayan Porcupine (H.brachyura).
Besides these large crested species, there are several smaller species without crests in north-east India, and the Malay region from Nepal to Borneo.
The genus Atherurus includes the brush-tailed porcupines which are much smaller animals, with long tails tipped with bundles of flattened spines. One species is found in the Malay region and one in Central and West Africa. The latter species, the African Brush-tailed Porcupine (Atherurus africanus), is often hunted for its meat.
Trichys, the last genus, contains one species, the Long-tailed Porcupine (Trichys fasciculata) of Borneo. This species is externally very similar to Atherurus, but differing from the members of that genus in many cranial characteristics.
Fossil species are also known from Africa and Eurasia, with one of the oldest being Sivacanthion from the Miocene of Pakistan. However, it was probably not a direct ancestor of modern porcupines.[3]
source:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_World_porcupine
They include four genera, of which the first is represented by the North American Porcupine (Erethizon dorsatum), a stout, heavily built animal, with long hairs almost or quite hiding its spines, four front and five hind-toes, and a short, stumpy tail. It is a native of the greater part of Canada and theUnited States, wherever there is any remnant of the original forest left.
The tree porcupines (Coendou, Sphiggurus, and Echinoprocta) contain 16 species. They are found throughout tropical South America, with two extending into Mexico. They are of a lighter build than the ground porcupines, with short, close, many-coloured spines, often mixed with hairs, and prehensile tails. The hind-feet have only four toes, owing to the suppression of the first, in place of which they have a fleshy pad on the inner side of the foot; between this pad and the toes, branches and other objects can be firmly grasped as with a hand. These three genera are often united into a single genus Coendou.
Genus Chaetomys, distinguished by the shape of its skull and the greater complexity of its teeth, contains C. subspinosus, a native of the hottest parts of Brazil. This animal is often considered a member of the Echimyidae on the basis of its premolar. However, a molecular phylogeny based on themitochondrial gene coding for cytochrome b combined to karyological evidence actually suggests that the bristle-spined rat is more closely related to the Erethizontidae than to the Echimyidae, and that it is the sister group of all other Erethizontidae[3].
source:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_World_porcupine
Wednesday, November 14, 2012
Porcupine's Diet
Porcupine Diet
As plant eaters, the porcupine diet has great diversity, yet the animal is very much a slave to the seasonal changes in the food supply in the area in which they. In the spring, summer and fall all is well with respect to food supply. They will feed on the buds of trees such as the sugar maple in the spring. Conversely, once the sugar maples leaf out, the porcupine moves onto other fare due to the fact that the leaves contain tannin, a substance that is toxic to the porcupine diet. They move onto the cambium layers under the bark of beech, basswoods and aspens and the leaves of trees that contain lower levels of tannin such as the ash trees.
In the fall feeding switches over to acorns and pine nuts they gather from high up in the trees.
In the winter, porcupines are more limited and forced to eat more bark. They will partake in the bark of sugar maples, ponderosa pines, and hemlocks as well as pine needles.
In your yard they will quite happily feed on raspberry canes, strawberry patches, brussel sprouts, cabbages, geraniums and roses, carrots, potatoes and virtually all root vegetables, from the top down! Ornamental grasses are no match for the appetite of the porcupines either. Neither are flowering herbs and apples.
The porcupine diet does cause some issues for humans. The herbivore diet of the animals leaves a distinct and sometimes unrivaled craving for salt. And since potato chips and French fries are not available to the animals in the wild, they have found some curious ways of soothing that craving. Many homeowners have awakened to find their car tires, that have road salt on them, have been chewed leaving a very expensive wake up call! Salt cravings lead the animals to eat anything made of plywood that has salt residues from us too including canoe paddles, axe handles and horse saddles!
Experts also indicate that their gnawing on trees leads to such uneven growth that the end use timber is too distorted to harvest causing a negative impact on the timber industry. The damage inflicted to the trees by their bark chewing allows for the trees to become easy prey for attack from birds and insects, and most seriously, diseases.
For the home gardener a hungry porcupine can lead to the loss of entire strawberry patches and rows, eating their leaves over the fruit. Raspberry canes are often dwarfed making harvesting quarts of juicy berries improbable.
It is indeed the trees that are deformed and left vulnerable to disease and infestation that is by far the most detrimental factor of the porcupine diet.
source:http://www.outwitcritters.com/porcupine/diet.html
Behavior / characteristics
Behavior
The common porcupine is a solitary animal, although it may den with
other porcupines in the winter. It makes its den in caves, decaying logs
and hollow trees. The common porcupine doesn't hibernate, but it may
stay in its den during bad weather. The common porcupine is a good
swimmer, its hollow quills help keep it afloat. It is also an excellent
tree-climber and spends much of its time in trees. It is a very vocal
animal and has a wide-variety of calls including moans, grunts, coughs,
wails, whines, shrieks and tooth clicking.
Characteristics
The porcupine is a rodent.The porcupine uses its quills for defense. The porcupine cannot shoot
its quills. When a predator approaches, the porcupine will turn its
back, raise the quills and lash out at the threat with its tail. If the
porcupine hits an animal with its quills, the quills become embedded in
the animal. Body heat makes the barbs expand and they become even more
deeply embedded in the animal's skin. If an animal is hit in a vital
place it may die. The porcupine is not an aggressive animal. It will
only attack if it is threatened. Some animals, like the fisher, are
experts at attacking porcupines It has black to brownish-yellow fur and
strong, short legs. It has hairless soles on its feet that help it climb
trees. It has a round body, small ears and a small head. The most
recognizable feature of the porcupine is its quills. A porcupine may
have as many as 30,000 quills. The quills are hairs with barbed tips on
the ends. Quills are solid at the tip and base and hollow for most of
the shaft. The porcupine has quills on all parts of its body, except for
its stomach. The longest quills are on its rump. The shortest quills
are on its cheeks.
source:http://www.nhptv.org/natureworks/porcupine.htm
Habitat
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