Animals – Hedgehogs: Friend or foe?

Our Department of Conservation (DOC) classifies hedgehogs as introduced pests with voracious appetites that eat native invertebrates such as skinks and wetas and the eggs and chicks of ground-nesting birds. The file of hard evidence against them is growing. DOC encourages people to set traps on their properties to help progress toward ‘predator-free NZ’, although stoats, rats and possums are the main targets.  The SPCA seems to take a more ‘leave them alone’ approach, but it does support people who want to care for wounded or diseased hedgehogs, before returning them to the wild. They have online information on what to do and who to call for advice. Some individuals encourage hedgehogs into their gardens, for example, by leaving out cat food for them, to take advantage of the hedgehog’s appetite for slugs and snails. Other individuals go further and turn them into pets.

Hedgehogs are sort of cute to look at and vulnerable. They are the only land mammals in New Zealand that I can outrun and out-manoeuvre. The creator of Peter Rabbit, Beatrix Potter, endeared generations of us to hedgehogs with her character Mrs Tiggy-Winkle, the washerwoman, who lived in the lovely Lake District countryside in her tiny, rustic, hobbit-like house. However, being content with a career in manual housework does make Mrs Tiggy-Winkle a politically incorrect model for girls nowadays. In the latter part of last century, the New Zealand cartoonist Burton Silver brought us the black singlet-wearing woodsman, Bogor. Bogor often shared his time in the woods with hedgehogs. I seem to remember Silver’s hedgehogs had a penchant for marijuana.

It is said early British settlers brought hedgehogs to New Zealand to remind them of home and to help in the fight against all manner of slugs and grubs. They were introduced into Canterbury first. They made it to the North Island before 1910 and reached Auckland by 1927. Today, their numbers would suggest they are happier here than in their native Europe. Even though they eat grass grubs and porina moth larvae, it is hard to imagine them making an economic contribution to pastoral farming.

Apart from their own internal parasites, hedgehogs can carry cat and dog fleas. Mites can become quite a debilitating external parasite for them and this can predispose them to ringworm. Their ringworm species can be caught by people but apparently the dermatitis it causes usually clears up on its own in one to three weeks. Hedgehogs have also been known to carry TB but there is no TB in animals in Northland. Leptospirosis is a different story. While hedgehogs do not carry this potentially very serious disease in Europe, they have become a reservoir host for ballum, one of the six Lepto strains endemic in New Zealand.

David Haugh, Wellsford Vet Clinic
www.vetsonline.co.nz/wellsfordvet