Identifying Hedgehogs from their Natural Markings
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I have been lucky my hedgehog has had a few ticks so is very distinguishable 😀, however the ticks have dropped off now and I’m struggling to know if I have more than 1. The black and white camera pictures in the box make it harder. Sometimes there are 2 visits within an hour surely this must be 2 separate hogs? I feed some ‘wet’ dog food pouch and a dish of Go-cat and the wet food goes every night and about half the biscuit. Is there any way to tell if it’s male or female please?
Hi, this post has been really helpful. I’ve been watching my hogs on camera since May and whilst enjoying their antics have decided to study them a bit closer and try to identify individuals. I’m interested in knowing how many visit and who is a regular!
I’ve been using the lighter / white spines and writing a description as to where they are on each hog which is time consuming and quite hard to describe! I’m no good at drawing but will try and study the faces to those I recognise easily now and add that to my description and my screen shot ID gallery!
I’m hoping that this will help me to clarify if I have doubled up on some individuals as I have recorded 13 so far which seems rather a lot, although I’ve had 5 at once one night. Thanks for the pointers.Hi Trevathick
I kept a copy of some notes re. male or female which I did a while back so will copy it here.
You can’t reliably tell male from female by size. Some females are bigger than some males.
Males have a ‘blob’ roughly mid abdomen, about where you would expect a belly button to be, which can sometimes look a bit like a fifth appendage. So if one conveniently scratches in front of the camera and you can see that, it’s a male. You can also sometimes see underneath them on video, especially if they get up on their legs a bit, although If one is particularly furry underneath you can’t always see for certain.
You might get the opportunity to tell from their behaviour. The males circle the females during ‘courtship’ whilst the female is within the ‘circle’ and turns round and round, huffing as she goes, so that her face is roughly facing his and he is unable to get to the rear of her. This circling and huffing can continue for hours. It sometimes makes you wonder how they ever manage to produce any hoglets with all the time they waste circling!
Mature females often start the circling process with a pitter patter of their feet (sometimes described as looking a bit like jig) and tend to go backwards. They huff at the same time, usually in time to the jigging. You can often hear the huffing from a fair way off and that is the sound people often used to hear before ever seeing any hogs, and wonder what what on earth it was.
The males tend to be more aggressive and roll each other up if they meet. They don’t normally roll up a female except very rarely, seemingly by mistake. The females might on occasion nudge males or other females, but not usually anywhere near as roughly as the males will. Some of that might depend a bit on the character of individual hedgehogs.The males tend to return from hibernation earlier than the females, so that you might find that most of those around earlier in the year are males.
It is possible that it’s the same hog back within an hour. They sometimes go for a little wander and return fairly soon. But it could equally be a different hog.
Hi Flowerhog
Glad to hear you found the information useful. You really don’t need to be good at drawing. It’s really just to give you an idea of roughly where on the face there might be a dark area, what sort of shape the mark is, etc. But it is handy to have it as a record, so that when a hog turns up you can check your record – that is until you get used to the hogs markings, which you will do after a while if you are keeping notes.
If you have quite a few hogs visiting – when I was studying the hogs more carefully (over the course of several years) I found that it was the females who visited almost every night except for short periods of time when they may have been having hoglets. So you might find it helps to work out male from female as well. It was the females I came to know best. There were a few males who visited more frequently, but they have larger ranges than the females, so there were some which visited less often – presumably for those, my garden was not in a central place in their ranges.
Good luck with it all. Happy hog watching!
I seem to have two hogs visiting, the one with one appendage has a v shaped mark on its forehead. The other seems to have a double but smaller appendage in the same area, would this be a female with her mammary glands. Thank you.
It’s difficult to know exactly what you mean, ApplesandPears, without seeing it.
Apparently both males and females have nipples along each side, but these probably would be mostly hidden in the fur and wouldn’t necessarily be picked up by cameras. I imagine the females’ nipples might be more prominent when she’s nursing. But just from observing hogs from afar you might not see that, but it’s possible.
My description above is from what you can see in the field from a respectful distance – so that you can tell male from female from afar. My view is that unless a hedgehog is sick or injured and in need of help they should be left to get on with their own lives undisturbed. So that it would not be appropriate to catch a hog just to see if it was male or female (which would be for our benefit, not the hogs). I believe that we should only interact with hedgehogs if it is for the benefit of that particular hedgehog or hedgehogs in general. But with patience, it is possible to tell whether male or female from afar.
Hi Nic,
I have had the field camera low down on the patio where the hogs come to feed. Initially I thought it was only one hog visiting but noticed the one had a light area on its forehead and some back prickles. Later realised the hog had an appendage on the abdomen. But it has been there for the 3 weeks I had been filming. I then found you info which was useful. Then one night there was a second hog which resulted in a fracas. I went back through the videos and the one had no head marking on the other hog plus two appendages in a similar place to the first hog. I thought it may be nipples. The second hog has been visiting all along. Only time will tell if it is a nursing females if she brings the hoglets to forage. We think one was under the shed for a while. But there hasn’t been poo around the area for a couple of weeks. Thank you for your help.Hi Nic. Thanks for your advice. Yes I can confirm I have 2 hogs visiting🤗🤗 . I had 4 visits last night and studied the photos. They are distinguishable by the ticks again but I can see 1 has a darker area in middle of its forehead so can put that on my drawing and make further studies as each night passes.
Hi Nic, thank you so much for this post, it’s so helpful. I started out, as you suggested with the hogs with the really distinctive features. I’m confident that I definitely have 3 adults, and 3 ?juveniles -smaller than the adults, but have grown over the last 6 weeks since they started visiting. I think I might have more adults, but some visit less frequently and have less distinctive markings.
As people often wonder about male or female at the same time as identification generally, I will add some notes, here, which I wrote for another post:
MALE OR FEMALE
You can’t reliably tell male from female by size. Some females are bigger than some males. Although the larger males tend to be larger than the larger females
Males have a ‘blob’ roughly mid abdomen, about where you would expect a belly button to be, which can sometimes look a bit like a fifth appendage. So if one conveniently scratches in front of the camera and you can see that, it’s a male. You can also sometimes see underneath them on video, especially if they get up on their legs a bit, although If one is particularly furry underneath you can’t always see for certain.
You might get the opportunity to tell from their behaviour. The males circle the females during ‘courtship’ whilst the female is within the ‘circle’ and turns round and round, huffing as she goes, so that her face is roughly facing his and he is unable to get to the rear of her. This circling and huffing can continue for hours. It sometimes makes you wonder how they ever manage to produce any hoglets with all the time they waste circling!
Mature females often start the circling process with a pitter patter of their feet (sometimes described as looking a bit like jig) and tend to go backwards. They huff at the same time, usually in time to the jigging. You can often hear the huffing from a fair way off and that is the sound people often used to hear before ever seeing any hogs, and wonder what what on earth it was.
The males tend to be more aggressive and roll each other up if they meet. They don’t normally roll up a female except very rarely, seemingly by mistake. The females might on occasion nudge males or other females, but not usually anywhere near as roughly as the males will. Some of that might depend a bit on the character of individual hedgehogs.The males tend to return from hibernation earlier than the females, so that you might find that most of those around earlier in the year are males.
Just realised it was already included in this link, but may be easier to find here.
hi, I can recognise some hogs that
visit on camera, it’s also help full to go back to pervious videos if you can see if male or female or some spines missing on top of their heads, a one of mine a female has a gap between hers, some can be short or long if their relaxed, Jack a male has a baby face type look, can spot him straight away, others can be tricky and take a whileI’d love to draw a hedgehog, but I rarely have the time or executive function for creative activities like that. I do like drawing. I think hedgehogs would be really fun to draw.
Hi Echinoserious
It only needs to be a very rough sketch to help with remembering markings. Why not have go. You might be better at it than you think. It’s a lovely, long lasting way of remembering individual hedgehogs.
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