Picture of a baby porcupine having a snack

I immediately saw the photograph within this video as being very interesting. Baby porcupines look very interesting to me. This one was having a little snack as provided by somebody, perhaps the person who made the video. I think the still image is as good as the video. But please note that Twitter videos often disappear leaving a link to the video on the Twitter website. So, if you have visited this page several days or months or years after it was created, I would be very surprised if the video still works. I’m sorry for that but it is out of my control. You are, however, guaranteed to be left with the picture or a link to the video. The video doesn’t add much more to the picture in any case.

A little bit about porcupines

They are large rodents with a coat of sharp spines or quills which, as you know, are there to protect them. I’ve seen a cougar with their nose covered in quills. Did you know that cougars can die when their face is covered in quills because the quills can make their way into the stomach and then the chest cavity and lungs. In one instance a small female mountain lion who was struggling to survive attacked a porcupine. She died a month later because the quills had entered her chest cavity and lungs. One of her lungs had completely failed. One expert said that sometimes porcupines win in a fight with a mountain lion. Of course, in this instance the porcupine also lost so they both died in this encounter. A study also found that another 15-month-old lion died after an encounter with a porcupine. His body was found curled up at the base of a tree. His underside, chest, neck on one side of his face were completely covered in deeply embedded quills.

Porcupine quills are not just a painful deterrent. They can be deadly daggers and research indicates that porcupines are not afraid to use them to kill. The study found that porcupines use their quills to stab and kill foxes, dogs and badgers.

RELATED: 40-pound midget, subadult female mountain lion killed by a porcupine.

There are approximately 30,000 quills on a porcupine. They are hollow and of course sharply pointed. The quills are modified hairs. When they are attacked the quills detach leaving them and pierce the predator to cause stinging pain. They tear the flesh when they are extracted as they have barbs on them. They are not poisonous. Sometimes they can stay on the face of a predator and in the eyes or mouth which means that the predator becomes defenceless and cannot hunt.

I suspect that the female cougar mentioned above was desperate for food which is why she attempted the impossible. She was only 40 pounds in weight. She was exceptionally small, perhaps uniquely so. She was healthy though. Her mother had died prematurely. She taught herself to hunt and survive one brutal winter before succumbing to the porcupine.