According to the news, Pygmy hedgehogs become more and more popular as a exotic pet in Sweden.
Some people claim they are not as demanding as a dog or a cat. Thus making them easier to take care of. These cute little creatures go for $285 to $430 each. Most owners feed them dry cat food along with canned insects.
It reminds me I wanted a hedgehog as pet when I was a kid. It was after I saw one at a pet shop. My dad said "no" and it was the end of the debate. I can certainly get one now if I wish, but I am too busy taking care of my aquariums.
Those are adorable, and they do look like they would make a cute little pet. I have seen some of them advertised here on our local Craigslist. They weren't as expensive as the ones in Sweden, but they were still around $200 or so.
Having had experience with my dogs (and my llama) getting too close to a regular porcupine, I always wondered about whether these little ones had quills also. It would seem like they would be a dangerous little creature to have around if they have quills; so maybe they either don't have any quills, or they don't throw them like a full-size porcupine does.
I have never actually seen a live one, just the online pictures of them, and they are just as cute as cute can be !!
Wow - they are so adorable! Almost too cute to be real!
Here, where I live, I don't think you can have an exotic pet like that. There's pretty strict regulations about what you can keep as pets in a residential area and I've never heard of anything like that being permissible.
It would certainly make an interesting conversation topic though - when someone asks you whether you have any pets and you can tell them you have a hedgehog! I think it would come as a bit of a surprise to the standard dog or cat response to that sort of question!
These are absolutely adorable. I would love to have one of them. I have always wanted a hedgehog. They are so cute but I am not sure I would know how to properly care for one. I don't really know anybody who has one but I often seen them for sale at the local pet store. The thing that discouraged me the most from getting one was that they didn't have a very long life span. I couldn't stand to get o me and then have it pass away a few years later. I would be devastated.
They are adorable, but I wonder if it's fair to make them pets? They're not domesticated, after all.
I remember a case in the USA of a 14 years old gamer who loved Sonic games and desperately wanted a pet hedgehog. He found out that it's illegal to have a hedgehog as a pet in his state or the entire country. His mother went to a court case, and (surprisingly) won. Guess what was the name given to the pet?
I remember being baffled at how pampered the kid was, haha.
This is not surprising to me at all. Although Hedgehogs are illegal in California, they have become quite popular. It's very much a blue law that makes them illegal. No one truly minds them, but no one is fighting the law either.
I find them to be adorable little creatures. I wanted to have one of my own, but I really dislike the idea of having an animal in a cage for several hours a day.
I couldn't imagine it being good for such an animal to sit in a cage all day... I agree with you.
To be honest, I'm not sure if people shouldn't just stick to out usual pets and leave hedgehogs (and other wild animals) alone, unless they need help.
Seems sort of greedy and irresponsible, I guess. I would be worried about not being able to provide healthy food for the creature and making it unhappy by forcing it to live in my home. Though I have all the respect for people who rescue hurt hedgehogs and nurse them back to help.
Sadly, most people keep them in glass during the day. Granted, they are sleeping, but I'm not a fan of cages. I prefer super large pens at the very least. I definitely respect people that rescue, it just breaks my heart when they have nothing but a cage to use.
12-06-2015, 11:16 PM, (This post was last modified: 12-06-2015, 11:17 PM by Elfprincess.)
(12-05-2015, 02:45 PM)lexinonomous Wrote: Sadly, most people keep them in glass during the day. Granted, they are sleeping, but I'm not a fan of cages. I prefer super large pens at the very least. I definitely respect people that rescue, it just breaks my heart when they have nothing but a cage to use.
The only person in Poland that I'm aware of that has dedicated their life to saving hedgehogs is Andrzej Kuziomski, who runs a Hedgehog Alert.
His rescue pals live like this:
Here's an interview with him. I google translated it from Polish and pasted it here, because translating the whole page doesn't work for a reason. It's really interesting and touching, as well as informative on topic of hedgehogs. It might restore your faith in humanity for a bit...
The translation is a bit awkward, but understandable, I hope.
Quote:Baby hedgehogs, which I have now, this autumn orphans, are too small for the process of hibernation, not having enough of fat. In the last year due to the warm autumn we had a second litter hedgehogs two months too late. Winter survived only those babies, which someone took charge. The rest of them died out of cold - interview with Andrew Kuziomski, the founder of Poland's first rehabilitation center hedgehogs
How did it happen that you started to take care of hedgehogs?
Previously I ridden in kurierce cycling and I saw a huge amount of traveled hedgehogs - everywhere, even in the middle of the city. Still, I passed another steaming, hot body, from a few to a dozen a day! I could not stand it. I quit my job.
Other animals also fall under the wheels.
Yeah. But that hedgehogs are an endangered species, and no pigeons, dogs and cats. Their original environment is practically destroyed. Deciduous forests is less and less, otherwise they are spray the insecticides, and hedgehogs are owadożercy, so you do not have enough to eat. It is difficult to find a hedgehog older than two or three years, but can live up to a dozen.
According to a study of UK four years ago, in 2025 there will be no hedgehogs in Europe. And then not yet taken into account the Holocaust hedgehogs, which took place over the destabilization of the climate.
After floods in the Kłodzko Valley in 1997. On the first hedgehogs have to wait 10 years! Wytopiło all. As we do not help them, soon they will not. Hedgehogs are protected. But the one hand, the state requires to protect them, and on the other - does nothing to actually help them. The first and only rehabilitation center for hedgehogs put on me privately, and not the state.
What keeps you hedgehogs?
In the beginning, when there were only a few, I worked - I rode in Kurierce, repaired computers. But then hedgehogs were coming and never gave advice. Now, every hour is worth its weight in gold, because the work is very much. I then put center and foundation Igliwiak. Unfortunately, this year I did not get a dime from any institution grants!
That is still working, it is only thanks to private individuals, who pay as much as they can - sometimes five, sometimes 50, respectively. Last year the situation was also catastrophic, so alerted the media and managed to save the center. But it is very hard. I often have long, for example, in the clinic, where I treat hedgehogs.
How much is the monthly maintenance 60 hedgehogs?
The food itself - more than 4 thousand. monthly. In Poland, unfortunately, there is no special food for hedgehogs, and giving them even a good quality cat food or meat leads to damage to the teeth and kidney failure. There is nothing else like insects feed. Now the company eats some 120 liters of these insects month. Then there are treatments - 2 thousand. monthly. Unfortunately, hedgehogs are not easy to treat, and veterinarians in Poland does not have the slightest idea about them. I have several years working with only doctor in Poland who knows about Jeże - ridden abroad to learn and great dokształcił. To rent, because I do not have my own apartment, I rent these spaces - 25 and 35 m in which they live hedgehogs. The functioning of the center requires 8 thousand. monthly.
And now let's put the question: if the amount exceeds the capacity of 40-million country? I am, after all telephones from England, Germany, Scandinavia, I know how it looks abroad. The store is a special food for hedgehogs are centers clue, eg. In Zurich - the clinic, Salk operations, a full-time veterinarian. A year ago, our małopolska councilor for the cameras promised: 'We'll help, manage to find some means'. Ordinary lies. In a telephone conversation in August he told me that nothing is impossible.
You're alone, no one does not help you?
Everything is on my shoulders. This is the fourth year. So far, no one came forward to help anyway I would not have nothing to pay. And it is hard work. Prepare food, wash bowl, give medicines, clean up feces on a regular basis, once a week to replace hay and substrate in each pen. Hedgehogs require care 24 hours a day.
Why so?
Because it's nocturnal animals. Normally hedgehog at night defeats from a few to several kilometers in search of insects, because insects to eat glass - but needs adult hedgehog - it must be good natuptać. That's why I every night I release them to the hallways between pens so they could walk. I do this rotation is quite a balancing act, because some of them agree with each other, but some completely - you have to be careful not to get bitten. In addition to caring for them is a lot of organizational work because of the fact that hedgehogs are protected - every hedgehog needs to have a record, quickie, piles of paperwork.
You are here with their lives?
Yes. I sleep in the adjoining utility room, which thanks to the good will of the owner of the property I rent free. And for their truly modest needs - just any food markdown from Tesco and a few rags of lumpeksu - somehow I give advice earn various commissioned works.
How many hours do you sleep at night?
Three, four times. But one sequence I could at most an hour and twenty.
How do you stand !?
I take caffeine tablets, crystal clear, the equivalent of 12 coffees a day. It finishes off, of course. Sometimes with fatigue tangled my legs, I start to scream and curse, for it four more caffeine pills have no effect. No, but I have no other choice. I am they need. During the season, picking up 30, 40 calls a day, from across the Polish, even from abroad. People are hedgehog and call me, asking what to do, what to feed, how to behave. Nothing about them usually do not know. It operates also a lot of myths about hedgehogs.
What?
I think the biggest concerns rabies. From whom hedgehogs would get infected with rabies? After all, it owadożercy! From insects? I declare: I look forward to the first documented case of rabies in a hedgehog. I doubt I'll live to see it.
The second issue is fleas. It is not true that all hedgehogs have them, it depends on the environment. And if anything, it is a specific species of fleas that live exclusively on a hedgehog. So even if you jump to a dog, cat or human, that immediately jump out of it, because that blood does not taste them. This is due to the specific biology of hedgehog. When hedgehogs ruled on the ground, a dog, a cat and we've never been.
Another crap that stretches over 2 thousand. years, the hedgehog with an apple on spikes. It Pliny the Elder created the legend. Hedgehogs eat only apples worms, because sometimes thrive in orchards. For this exhibit specific behavior called samonamaszczeniem - like a hedgehog will meet new interesting smell or taste, it produces frothy saliva and tongue trying to apply it to the spikes. Often in this way, rolling over on his back and spikes paćkają in fruits. But the hedgehog is a predator. Even milk is deadly for him: Cow causes damage to the liver and goat - kidney stones.
You could write a book about them.
Yes, I have a lot of materials, and the last book of Jeże was released in Poland 50 years ago, it is a little funny and a little out of date, and above all - not available. But when I write? Can I leave my hedgehogs mountain for three hours and five minutes before the monitor my eyelids fall, and no matches are not helping.
Do hedgehog can keep at home as a pet? As you so petting them, they look tame.
No, it is legally prohibited animals under protection. Hedgehogs really never tame. This wild animals. Yes, they take me confidence, but as soon as you feel the natural environment, what hedgehogs love, or go walking around in the bushes, in burrows, immediately are switching. Sometimes, as I have a moment, I go out with one in front of the house for a walk. You have to see, how happy are those sweet eyes, when the language can afford poryć in the leaves, in the grass. This is a beautiful moment.
But many people have a hedgehog to hibernation. They arrange his example pen in the barn, because he has a reasonably warm. The young hedgehog, which will not hibernating, it will normally active in winter. It is very effective in the extermination of mice. If you have provided the first need is fed and happy, engaged in what he likes, or hunting. Adult mice did not catch, of course, but it will certainly pups rodents. The large mouse anymore in this region do not assume slot. The problem disappears. Hedgehogs are absolutely przecudowne being.
Do you release cured hedgehogs into the wild?
Of course. As soon as it gets a real spring, there is food for them, or insects - are coming into the world. In most cases, they are doing great. This year I released a few dozen healthy hedgehogs in places agreed with the Regional Directorate of Environmental Protection in Krakow. Most often these are wild gardens, not exactly airtight, adjacent to forest areas. First, you install them there house and feeds them, and after a while they decide - they want to go or not. Often they go, and fall suddenly recall where cottage, come back and pound in a bowl, claiming to eat.
They have excellent spatial memory. They are smarter than one would infer from the degree of undulations of the cerebral cortex - this according to research ethological.
Besides, there are on Earth for 60 million years, almost unchanged evolutionary survived many a disaster. It is not they invaded our world, but we are in them. People call me and say: 'hedgehog came to my area, the dog gets nervous!'. 'No, sir, I say, hedgehog was here before. And you and your dog you came just some measly few hundred thousand years ago '. They were here first and for so many million years did not destroy the planet as we did it within a few hundred thousand years. So who here is really smarter?
There are those who can not cope in nature?
Yes, of course, I have one that will never be alone. We now have a stupid fashion for sterile 'plastic' ogródeczki. Everything has to be trimmed, and those poor animals that love to romp in the bushes, they have nowhere to live. So how will our backyard pile of looted leaves it up to bury her immediately and are burned alive, because people do not come to mind to see! It is widespread.
Yesterday also I had such a phone - one small fled, the second burned, the third burned to death. The second phone - grandmother calls me that shovel a neighbor killed my mother Yezhov with small, because the dog was barking and woke him. And this is after a crime. Jez protects the same paragraph, which protects bison and bear. And what? As the bison is shooting, they immediately on the news all the honking. A thousand torn by dogs hedgehogs what? After all, dogs should be protected and their behavior is responsible owner!
And hedghegos, where someone's foot cutter to cut the wire. We have one that someone tied a ribbon hard for flowers - as we grew, ribbon increasingly cut into the skin, causing festering wound. I have a hedgehog with wydłubanymi eyes and hedgehogs, which were treated as a ball by children. Besides saying that stress kills with hedgehogs need to be taken literally. Sometimes the physical wound is not serious, but the shock makes the hedgehog dies.
The worst situation is in Malopolska - particularly soulless region. I regret that I assumed center here, I think it would be easier elsewhere. People are calling not for information, but with a grudge - that the helicopter did not send them. 'Here, in the bush for three days now lies hedgehog, you might have someone take care of him?' I wonder whether, if it was a kitten or little doggy is also to three days waiting for! Small jeżątko can die from hypothermia and starvation for three days, right? I do not understand it. Very often it is already too late to save them.
Are you from here?
No, no, I'm just settled. It does not matter where I am. In the proof I have driven the birthplace of Warsaw, but I do not feel absolutely bound to any region. College Study of the Environment (air protection against pollution) ended the turn in Silesia.
How old are you?
I was born in '68, but do not count years, did not celebrate birthdays.
And what do you held before a courier?
Variously long I dealt with the implementation of sound, working with teams. Now I can not listen to music differently than in the headphones, because hedgehogs can not stand the noise.
What will happen to run out of money to operate the resort? Can you imagine such a scenario could no longer continue with this work?
This is, unfortunately, very real. One day, there will be a stench, that home owners to force the door and you will find me dead with dozens of dead hedgehogs. With this way of life everything is possible, I am not a cyborg. With activity 21 hours a day and 1,200 mg of caffeine every day, no weekends, no free Sundays, no holidays
Maybe you should at least reduce the number?
Restrict ?! I have to kill some? And you choose that?
How do you assess human nature?
Tragedy. It seems to me that even in my generation are people who are doing something not for money, only just out of passion. Now there was a monstrous selfishness flourished. I sometimes yell at the people well, mix them with mud. And they call me already you somewhat better, but he decided to help to call.
The world is full of cruelty in general, people mistreat other animals, bully dogs, cats
Well, sorry! Dogs and cats have in this country ten thousand public and private institutions and are not threatened with extinction. A hedgehogs? Hedgehogs have only me!
I am enthralled by the fact that you keep a pygmy python. I previously thought that all pythons are lethal animals. Like its name, the pygmy python resembles the Pygmies of Africa in stature. From what I have learnt, the females typically mature in up to 18 months while the males mature in up to 36 months. So presume that at 2 years, the animal could have reached or is approaching maturity.
![[Image: Pygmy-hedgehogs-a-hit-with-Swedes.jpg]](http://cdnph.upi.com/sv/b/upi/UPI-8171409668681/2014/1/425b7c324ba8c1b2b4e456c1d0673db9/Pygmy-hedgehogs-a-hit-with-Swedes.jpg)
I can certainly get one now if I wish, but I am too busy taking care of my aquariums.
![[Image: z8798258Q,Andrzej-Kuziomski.jpg]](http://bi.gazeta.pl/im/8/8798/z8798258Q,Andrzej-Kuziomski.jpg)