WARNING – The photograph below may cause some distress.
Picture # 2
In Europe it’s also quite common with accidents in your garden involving garden trimmers and hedgehogs.
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Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
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and that is quite dreadful, the hedgehog is too sleepy to move quickly?
Most animals flee the noise and vibration
Rog, I have some ” happy end” pics as well, will post them next time.
Hedgehogs sleep during the day, dunno exactly why they so often are affected by accidents of garden equipment.
As this is a climate blog , I can as well mention that the hedgehogs in southern Sweden got a second litter . This is extremely unusual in Sweden but not in the rest of Europe. Unfortunately they will not survive the winter , it’s too late in the season, they must weight about 600 grams to succesfully hibernate, but if some rehab centre can take care of some animals they can easily survive.
Not strictly a climate blog Ann – politics and the environment.
The most common death cause for hedgehogs are road kills.
By far the most common incident that warrants a hedgehog being rescued is that it is out during the day. Hedgehogs are very strictly nocturnal.
They will only venture out during the day if:
– They are juveniles and have not been able to find enough food. This happens especially the onset of winter
– They are sick or wounded and have been unable to feed and build a nest
– They are young and have lost contact with their mother
– They are blind and have lost the concept of day and night
In some years , especially in southern parts of Britain, they don’t hibernate.
Never feed the hedgehog milk, this will cause stomache ache since they badly tolerate lactose.
As a child in England, I had six successive pet hedgehogs, imaginatively called Horace I, Horace II, Horace III etc. My main memory is that they swarmed with fleas, causing great anxiety to my mother. Are hedgehog fleas parasitic or symbiotic?
On the theme of Human Ecology, a story was that gipsies used to eat them, after baking them in a ball of clay in the fire (the clay pulled the prickles off). Are there gipsies in Sweden? Could a decline in gipsies (or change of life style) have led to an increase in hedgehogs? Any information gratefully received. I might publish a paper in a refereed ecological journal. A sure hit if I could weave Global Warming and flea populations into the picture.
To all readers,
First of all a big apologise for the horrible pictures that might be scary to sensitive persons.
I have asked Jennifer to delete the post since the pic looked too horrid….
Davey,
During the summer months every hedgehog casually is likely to have been a victim of attack by blow flies. The evidence may be in form of eggs or larvae from fresh hatches up to full-grown maggots. These kill the hedgehog unless they are controlled.
Fly eggs. The eyes , ears, nose, mouth , face and underarms are all favorite laying sites. They can be washed off.
Maggots. The fly eggs hatch into maggots often within hours of being attacked. Contrary to popular opinion maggots will attack sound flesh as well as necrotic material. As they grow the maggots will burrow into the animal .
Maggots do create toxins that can be taken up by the affected animal. If there is a massive maggot built up then a drug with antitoxin, anti- infammatory and analgesic properties will help.
No chance of deleting once we’ve posted! Sorry Ann!
and it is always good to learn something new about Davey.
Ann: I put your pics into the same bag as road kill. It’s not a pretty sight either.
In this region there are dozens of bloated roo carcasses with legs poking into the sky. In Tasmania it’s dozens of flattened brush tailed possum squashed into the road every day. With this drought, lots of cockatoos cop it while feeding on seeds trapped in dust at the bitumen edge. I never take photos.
Wildlife loss due to hunting and fishing seems far less obvious, the chance to document causes is even less as scavengers often clean it up. I do find great tangles of line and cord though.
Nothing is more obvious than discarded drink bottles and plastic bags. These are everywhere so I take many photos of this junk as it piles up.
“Nothing is more obvious than discarded drink bottles and plastic bags.”
Too true Gavin. Manly council was trying to get plastic drink bottles banned, or at least draw attention to alternatives. These hideous relics of a throwaway society are everywhere. I remember once stopping at a road side view point in Israel to view the stunning landscape, but my first vision was a huge mound of plastic drink bottles. I wonder if in the coming centuries these will be in Museums and treasure shops in place of the Roman oil lamps.
“Nothing is more obvious than discarded drink bottles and plastic bags.”
You should see footage taken at a national park,where,over 12 months,not only has a pile of rubbish grown in size but Parks Rangers would have driven past it numerous times.
Thanks for the information on maggots and hedgehogs, Ann. One wonders how hedgehogs survived in the past. There is a similar problem with sheep in Australia, but they are not, of course, native to this land. I wonder if genetic modification could produce a fly that would selectively lay eggs on some contributors to this blog? What an evil thought, Davey. I shall immediately flog myself and say 2000 Hail Marys, with a smirk on my face.
Davey,
Some interesting information.
Hedgehogs lived together with the dinosaurs…. this makes the Erinaceidae family the oldest living insectivore.
Hi Gavin,
Indeed the plastic bottles etc are a nuisance to the eye as well to wildlife.
It’s quite familiar now for the public that marine mammals might swallow plastic bags and die.
I don’t know how it is in Australia but in Sweden now the plastic around 6-packs is banned. Birds mostly sea birds got it all wrapped around their beaks and died of starvation. There was a campaign ( with some ugly photos) and the plastic was banned…
There is another problem here as well with beer cans and Coke cans along the roadside. When the lawn mower makes its work the aluminium will become to little pieces that cows etc that are grazing eat. This causes damage to the intestines and stomache and the animals die of internal injuries.
Jayne; You must ask yourself should those same Park Rangers pick up on the roadsides, the bush and the beach on their way through..
IMO It’s a nonsense to expect someone else to pick up all our rubbish however I often pick up busted beer bottles in playgrounds and on the sand where kids play is bare feet. Their parents have no idea of the hidden shards that lurk after all night parties dissolve into the dawn. I have also become extremely aggressive to any bums with similar disregard close to home. My reaction started after spending a few hours in A&E.
Off topic if I can quote Senator Bill Heffernan (ABC Difference of Opinion this week) there is another angle to this throw away society.
Bottled water is “a community con”, says Heffernan
http://bulletin.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=264308
Some bottles of treated drinking water are now imported from China and are selling at supermarket prices greater than our own bottled pure water. He goes on about milk being the looser.
http://abc.net.au/tv/differenceofopinion/
I guess many people can’t think for themselves about what they are doing to our society at any level of entertainment.