What is a porcupine?
Q: What is a porcupine?
A: A porcupine is a rodent with a coat of sharp spines, or quills, that defend them from predators.
Q: How big are porcupines?
A: Most porcupines are about 60–90 cm long, with a 20–25 cm long tail and weigh between 12-35 pounds (5–16 kg).
Q: What color are they?
A: Porcupines come in various shades of brown, grey, and the unusual white.
Q: What is the correct name for a baby porcupine?
A: The correct term for a baby porcupine is a porcupette.
Q: How do the quills work to protect the animal?
A: Porcupine quills are as sharp as needles and have small backwards-facing barbs on the tip that catch on the skin making them hard and painful to pull out. Quills can still penetrate animals and humans even after death.
Q: Where do they live?
A: Porcupines can live in tropical and mild parts of Asia, Italy, Africa, North America and South America in forests, deserts and grasslands. Some live in trees while others stay on the ground. They also like going near roads where rock salt has been used to melt ice or snow.
Q: What do they eat?
A: Porcupines search for salt by eating plywood cured with sodium nitrate, certain paints, tool handles footwear clothes other items coated in salty sweat as well as different salt-rich plants such as yellow water lily and aquatic liverwort fresh animal bones outer tree bark mud in salt-rich soils.
