Why hedgehogs really are some of the garden's most prickly customers

Why hedgehogs really are some of the garden’s most prickly customers: The fierce foragers aren’t afraid to fight dirty in the hunt for food, study finds

• Hedgehogs are not afraid to fight against each other and against bigger animls 
• Observations have come from hours of footage submitted to BBC’s Springwatch
• Read: Mystery animal skeleton found behind old cupboard in Canberra home

Hedgehogs have a reputation as one of the gentler inhabitants of the suburban garden – despite those sharp spines.

But in the fight for food, they are actually some of the fiercest foragers, a study shows. The prickly customers aren’t afraid to fight dirty both against each other and against bigger animals such as cats.

The observations come from hundreds of hours of footage submitted to BBC’s Springwatch programme after food was left out for animals.

Hedgehogs were filmed doing a ‘barge and roll’ move, in which one forces another to curl up, before rolling it away from food. In one case a hedgehog rolled a rival into a pond. The study, in the journal Animals, looked at skirmishes between badgers, foxes, cats and hedgehogs, with badgers winning the most battles overall.

But hedgehogs stood up well to cats, winning 39 per cent of battles and losing only 11 per cent. They were also the species most likely to fight each other.

Hedgehogs are some of the fiercest foragers, a study has shown. The prickly customers aren’t afraid to fight dirty both against each other and against bigger animals such as cats

Study leader Professor Dawn Scott, of Nottingham Trent University, said: ‘Cats won most of the confrontations with foxes… but when it came to hedgehogs, they usually ran off without putting up any fight. 

‘We saw cats feeling a spike with their paw, or sniffing a hedgehog, then simply running away.’

Badgers, which are strong enough to unroll a curled up hedgehog and eat it without being skewered, came out top in the study, winning most fights against other species.

Based on the videos people submitted, cats won more fights against foxes, coming out top in 44 per cent of confrontations, with foxes winning less than a third of fights against cats.

The rest of the interactions ended in a ‘draw’, where both animals stayed in the same area or ate the same food, or with an unclear result.

Cats and foxes appeared to take a particular dislike to one another, with more than three-quarters of interactions sparking some form of aggressive or defensive reaction.

In the study, hedgehogs stood up well to cats, winning 39 per cent of battles and losing only 11 per cent. They were also the species most likely to fight each other. [File image] 

When cats came up against hedgehogs, the spiky mammals won 39 per cent of the time, while cats won in less than 11 per cent of altercations over food or kitchen scraps left out by people.

Professor Scott said: ‘Ideally, if people do feed animals, we would encourage them to leave out healthy food designed for wildlife and to scatter it in different places at different times, so the food supply is not predictable, and so animals are less likely to come to the same place at the same time.’

Within the same species, hedgehogs were found to be the most combative – with more than half of interactions between them leading to some form of aggression.

Hedgehogs are particularly reliant on food in gardens, as they need to fatten up before hibernation.

Badgers were the least competitive with one another, with just seven per cent of encounters resulting in a stand-off.

Cats fighting each other was not looked at in the study, which was published in the journal Animals.

More research is needed, as the videos submitted to the study may have been the most dramatic interactions between animals.

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