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Hedgehogs look both ways, then turn back

August 14, 2002

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WHY did the hedgehog cross the road? Well, it turns out he didn`t. In fact, it appears that the much-loved spiny creatures, whose tragic misadventures have made them the butt of such cruel jokes, do everything possible to stay off the asphalt.
"We were surprised they showed such strong avoidance of all but the very smallest roads," says Patrick Doncaster, a biologist at the University of Southampton who radio-tracked eight urban hedgehogs to see how roads affected their nocturnal foraging.
But hedgehogs haven`t suddenly acquired a new-found traffic awareness. The answer is simpler. Roads form an obvious physical barrier because the hard surface isn`t to the animals` liking, plus there aren`t many tasty worms crawling around on the tarmac. "They`re not responding to the traffic, but to the road surface itself," says Doncaster. "I don`t think they are fearful of cars as such."
In Functional Ecology (vol 16, p 504), Doncaster and his colleague Carlo Rondinini point out that up to 350,000 hedgehogs die each year in the Netherlands, as well as a similar number in Belgium. Across Europe, the death toll averages 1 animal per year for every 1 to 2 kilometres of road. But Doncaster reckons this accounts for only a few per cent of the population.
Ironically, says Doncaster, hedgehogs are "orders of magnitude" more abundant in urban rather than rural areas, thanks to more food and fewer predators. For example, worms are easier to find on the short grass of playing fields and garden lawns, and badgers are less of a threat in towns than in the countryside.
The researchers have also established, using an unpublished analysis of hedgehog DNA, that males are more likely than females to brave the traffic. "It`s quite likely the males are greater risk-takers," says Doncaster.

Author: Andy Coghlan

http://www.newscientist.com">New Scientist issue 17th August 2002

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