Porcupine Facts

When Emily in Canada asked for help identifying what species of porcupine she photographed here in NatGeo’s Your Shot, we turned to Uldis Roze of Queens College at the City University of New York, who wrote the book on porcupines.

If you didn’t know there were different species of porcupines, never fear. In our Weird Animal Question of the Week, we’ll fill you in on the most surprising facts about these prickly pals.

Roze says Emily’s subject is Coendou mexicanus, a Mexican long-haired porcupine, identifiable by its prehensile tail and long hair hiding those famous quills. The species is found as far south as Panama (Emily photographed it in Costa Rica), and it and its fellow porcupine species aren’t well studied, Roze says.

Roze shared these little-known points on the pointy rodents.

Porcupine attacks are pre-medicated.

The quills of the North American porcupine (Erethizon dorsatum) have a topical antibiotic on them, so even though getting stuck is painful, it won’t cause infection.

Porcupines don’t medicate their quills as a courtesy to others, though. “It’s a defense against self-quilling,” Roze says. After all, an animal that walks around covered in sharp objects is bound to stick itself once in a while.

To keep themselves from falling out of trees and quilling themselves, 15 of the 16 species of New World porcupine have a prehensile tail that can grab onto branches (all Old World porcupines are ground dwellers). Only the North American porcupine does not, which may explain why that species evolved the antibiotic: as a defense against those selfie-sticks that can occur during a tumble.