The Infinite Monkey Cage - Hedgehogs

Episode Date: November 20, 2024

Brian Cox and Robin Ince emerge from the hedge row waking up their guests from hibernation to discuss the fascinating lives of Britain’s favourite mammal, the hedgehog. They are joined by hedgehog experts Hugh Warwick and Sophie Lund Rasmussen (also know as Dr Hedgehog), and by broadcaster and poet Pam Ayres. Sophie Lund Rasmussen has crowd sourced 14 freezers worth of dead hedgehogs for her research and has brought one of her more unique samples with her, the penis of the oldest known hedgehog who reached a stupendous 16 years of age! Together our panel snuffle their way through the evolution of hedgehogs, their life cycle and how to stop them getting run over by robotic lawn mowers!Producer: Melanie Brown Executive Producer: Alexandra Feachem Researcher: Olivia JaniBBC Studios Audio production

BBC Sounds music radio podcasts. You're about to listen to the Infinite Monkey Cage. Episodes will be released on Wednesdays wherever you get your podcasts. But if you're in the UK, the full series is available right now. First on BBC Sound. Hello, I'm Robin Ince and I'm Brian Cox. And this is the Infinite Monkey Hedgerow. You've heard our previous fighting challenges.

Bees versus wasps. Cats versus dogs. Bats versus flies. Well, today, let's get ready to rumble, because it's hedgehogs! But it's just hedgehogs. They're not going to be against anything because everyone loves hedgehogs. So there's no point in doing hedgehogs versus flies. Hedgehogs win. Hedgehogs versus what? Hedgehogs win.

Hedgehogs versus gazelles. Hedgehogs win. Basically, we know that there's no point. So the hedgehog begins this show as a victor without competition. I'm very worried for the listeners of Radio 4, actually. It's a new time, 11 o'clock in the morning. I can picture people just drinking their second cup of tea and then that happens. Second cup of tea by 11? Oh Ryan, if they're only on their second cup they're not proper Radio 4 listeners as far as I'm concerned. Today we are asking what are hedgehogs? What do we need to do to ensure their survival and how exactly do they mate?

Which of course the old punchline used to be with difficulty But actually it turns out it's not it's quite quite simple But we will be leaving that a little bit later on not quite as early as 11 o'clock. We're probably about 11 20 So watch out then for the hedgehog mating tips Hedgehog mating tips? Do you think hedgehogs are listening? Oh yeah! If you've not seen the breakdown of our core mammalian listenership, you'd be surprised to find that humans are actually fourth in the list.

To discuss hedgehogs, we are joined by a specialist in European hedgehogs, a specialist in European hedgehogs, and a beloved poet who has written all about European hedgehogs. And they are. Hello, I'm Dr. Sophie Lund Rasmussen, or Dr. Hedgehog, and I absolutely adore hedgehogs. I'm a research fellow at the Wildlife Conservation Research Unit at University of Oxford and at Lineker College, University of Oxford. And my favourite fictitious hedgehog is Mrs. Tiggy Wiggles from the Beatrix Potter novels. I absolutely love her as well because she's such an inclusive and kind character and a great advocate for

hedgehogs I think. I am Hugh Warwick and I am a spokesperson for the British Hedgehog Preservation Society, written three books about hedgehogs so far, which some people think is excessive, but I have another one planned. And my favourite fictitious hedgehog is a hedgehog called Hugh, which seems a bit self-serving, this one, but the wonderful singer and songwriter Nick Cope from Nick Cope's popcasts on CBeebies. I'm looking at the audience and thinking no probably not the right demographic but he's written two songs

about a hedgehog called Hugh and it means that it's opened up an entirely new demographic for me of the under fives who now think I'm amazing for knowing Nick Cope. Hello I'm Pam Ayres. I was brought up in North Berkshire, and I was absolutely surrounded by wildlife of all kinds. And I didn't think it was anything that would ever be threatened. And I have seen it all disappear, and it breaks my heart, really.

We used to hear hedgehogs snuffling around, and they were just there, the same as water voles and swifts and swallows and cuckoos and everything else that's gone. So I try and do my bit to make people aware of their plight, and I wrote a book, I've written several things about hedgehogs, but I'll just read you a little verse from this, which is my favourite fictitious hedgehog, and he hasn't got a name name but this is what he says. If in your fence you'd made a space we could have moved from place to place have found a girl, pay their respects, had some cautious hedgehog sex and in a cozy

pile of logs produced a nest of little hogs. And this is our panel. Hugh, can I just ask you, because I was once asking the professor Steve Jones about Charles Darwin, he's an expert, and I said are there any books of Charles Darwin's I shouldn't read and he said don't read about his books of Barnacles because he became overly obsessed Do you ever feel that you became overly obsessed with a hedgehog in the way that Darwin became overly obsessed with barnacles was his a sort Of penis envy thing again with the barnacles the massive massive proportion to body size. No, no, I don't think it was no Remind you again 11 a.m. Oh, sorry

In which case no, I my my I my involvement with hedgehogs is entirely rational. It started as an ecologist going and looking at the impact of hedgehogs on ground nesting birds and then finding a sort of niche not many other people were looking then back in the mid 1980s at what hedgehogs actually did. And the main thing to bear in mind is that they are the best animal to study because they don't have a fight or flight response. So it means that when you get close to the hedgehog, it's not going to run away, so you're chasing after them, and it's not going to rip your face off.

And it just rolls up into a ball eventually after frowning. They frown first. And so when a hedgehog is first nervous, it frowns, and it brings the spines forwards over its eyes and its nose. And I was on The One Show a while back, and I'd never met Ryland before. And I had no idea why people were so excited by Ryland.

And then I was mentioning this and he said well hedgehogs just roll into a ball don't they? I said first of all they frown and explained all this I said well you frown and and he said I can't frown he's a botox and it was that moment of going I now get it so anyway if you take home nothing of any import from tonight at all it's purely don't give hedgehogs botox because it really interferes with their ability to defend themselves. No, I'm not obsessed The tragedy of the vain hedgehog and Pam, what do you think it is about hedgehogs that you know They always are in terms of number one in terms of Britain's favorite mammal

Yeah, well man, what do you think it is that draws people towards hedgehogs? Well, they are our only spiny mammal and they are immensely appealing and they've got little black eyes like buttons And I feed hedgehogs every night. I'm very lucky that they come through the hole in the wall, which I made Well, not myself somebody with a hammer and chisel made it And the hedgehogs come every every night and feed and you if you listen and they've only got little teeth and I put out the kitten biscuits for them and you can hear them crunching and they're very endearing they appear in lots of fiction Mrs. Tigi Winkle etc and they're just sweet and they don't do any harm and they're benevolent unless they're in New Zealand in which case they they scoff all the bird takes

and then people kill them, which is a shame, that then there's an imbalance. But I think they're endearing to look at, they're disappearing fast, they get run over, they're vulnerable, they drown in your swimming pool, they get burnt in your bonfire, they get stabbed in your compost heap, and I think lots of people like me would like to protect them. Sophie, for you, because you're an academic, so you're an academic, you could have chosen any animal I suppose to study in the world, but you chose hedgehogs. Why? Yes, well ever since I was a child I've just been fascinated by the hedgehogs. I remember during the summer nights putting up a

tent in the garden and just waiting inside the tent waiting for the hedgehogs to show up because this is one of the few animal species that you can actually get really close to because their strategy when faced with danger or humans staring at them is to stand completely still and then decide whether to curl up or run away so you can get really close to it and get this wonderful nature experience. So I think the hedgehog is a perfect, you know, advocate animal for wildlife and appreciating nature in general. So scientifically speaking, what is a hedgehog? What's its evolutionary history?

So the hedgehog belongs to the order called eulifataifla, which basically means truly blind and fat. And this is why the head shark is my perfect spirit animal. I mean we're a perfect match. I'm slightly nearsighted and perhaps a bit overweight. So it's really fascinating. In terms of the evolutionary history, so we go back from, we're here today, human beings, hedgehogs, where do we have to go to find our common ancestor? So right now, the family Erinokidae consists of hedgehogs and moon rats, basically. Moon rats?

Yes, yes. So that's the hairy hedgehogs. And the hedgehogs themselves, the Erenakei nai, they have, it's like five genera and up to 19 species depending on who you ask. But we have to go back like four million years to find the last common ancestor. But it's really interesting because we have a lot of species that have developed spines, right? So the porcupines and the tenrecs, but they're not related to the hedgehogs. So it's convergent evolution. So they've actually developed spines as well. Really good defense strategy. But you could say nowadays, so the hedgehogs would defend themselves by standing

completely still because normally the predators that prey on headshots they see movement in the dark so a strategy to stand still and curl up is a perfect strategy but not adapted to modern living right because if you do that in front of a car or a robotic lawnmower coming your way it's a it's really not the best solution well we're going to come back to the robotic lawnmowers later on as well and Hugh I just want to you, it's come up a couple of times there, fight or flight. How many animals do we know of that don't have fight or flight? Because it seems to be quite rare to have that situation. I have two tattoos. And one is the hedgehog and the other one is of a toad.

Because the toads also don't have a fight or flight response. And they have toads... Is that all toads? Well, certainly the common toad in this country because they're covered they haven't got prickles But they're covered in in these amazing little chemical factory which produces toxins which put off Potential predators, so it's the same sort of principle going back to the the relationship this sort of evolutionary history of the hedgehog I would say probably at the moment the most the closest relatives though are Apart from the the gym yaws and the moon rats are the shrews and the moles so that's actually there where they're most closely situated as with with them rather than

is often the thought of as you say like the porcupines as pork like being rodents in a totally different order so it's basically a spiky mole well spiky shrew probably because if you go back if you go back to the myocene about sort of five million years ago You had a thing called dino gallerix the fossil record shows Which means terrible shrew and it was basically a proto hedgehog about the size of a spaniel quite like to have met that Could you take us through the the life cycle of a hedgehog? So from when it's born, how does it live? How long does it live? so the thing is that the head sharks are mating and then

The males just leave and the females are left with all the work, right? so so they are bringing up the hot glitz and the head sharks usually give birth to around four or five hot glitz at a time and The head sharks are generally very promiscuous. So each litter may have several different fathers actually. So each litter might have separate fathers. That's kind of quite an intriguing thing. Yes, it really is and it's of course also a huge benefit to avoid, you know, inbreeding and everything. So that's good.

Then the hucklets stay with their mother until they're around six, seven weeks old and then they're left on their own. So they have to go out and fend for themselves and usually they're around 225 grams when they do that. And then the mothers have time to gain a lot of weight and prepare for hibernation. And then the hedgehogs hibernate, right? And they get up again at springtime and then it all starts all over again. And it's really interesting because you can tell the age of a hedgehog

by counting growth rings in their jawbones, like you would do on trees, like earrings in trees. So we basically necropsy'd 697 hedgehogs from all over Denmark. They took out the space of 14 freezers and it was a lot of work. But then we cleaned the jaw bones and counted the growth rings in the jaw bones. And in some cases, we managed to count to 16 years. That was amazing. This was a hedgehog called Torvald. And he died sadly in care because he was attacked by a dog,

and his whole body got infected. And also his penis, which I've brought along today. So this is a very swollen hedgehog penis from Torvald, the oldest head shark in the world. And... I was not expecting that. That's one of the things I did not think I would see today. The average we could find from looking at 400 jaw bones was around two years of age. So the head sharks are still in trouble. It's really hard being a hedgehog nowadays. And so just going to take a step back, you're talking about the absolute, you brushed over the mating. The most fantastic bit of the hedgehog's life I think has to be the courtship of the hedgehog,

which is this wonderful thing, the hedgehog carousel, where you have a female hedgehog coming into season and attracts males from all over the place, but a male will start circling around and around the female. And she then makes a very distinctive noise. And many of you may have heard this noise wondering what it was. And she goes, fff, fff, fff, fff. I don't quite know what she's trying to say to the male, but basically she wants to eat, and he wants to relax,

because the only way that mating can take place is if the female relaxes. Anyway, so that thing goes on and on and on. And it results in these little circles of compressed vegetation which led to the greatest headline the Guardian has ever had, which was Hedgehogs cleared of corn circle dementia. Somebody had suggested that these crop circles, mysterious crop circles, nobody knows how they're made. Is it Earth energies rising or aliens visiting? And somebody had suggested... Neither.

To be fair, Brian, you haven't done the research. Yeah, somebody did do the research because somebody suggested it might be circling hedgehogs making some of this. How big would a hedgehog- But then somebody calculated it require 40,000 hedgehogs working in synchrony to make even the more modest crop circles. Or one very, very large hedgehog.

Oh. Pam, have you seen those structures in your garden, the flattened circles? No I haven't I haven't seen that but I've heard that that noise a lot and then I just get out of the way quick because I think if they're thinking about mating whether I want them to because I want them to reproduce so I just scarper. Actually on the subject of baby hedgehogs I lost my little dog I had a Jack Russell that I adored and she got bad arthritis and couldn't walk and the vet give me a talking to and said look she can't walk she can't sniff

around you can't do anything you know get a grip and so anyway the little dog was put down and it was awful it was a dreadful gash of grief and I was out that evening and we had a stable, an old stable and I was so upset and I looked over the stable, it was really late at night and it was like a consolation prize because there was a big hedgehog in there with four babies and I didn't know, I didn't even know there was a pregnant hedgehog around and it was like a solace. Yeah, and so... Yeah, you could all burst into tears now.

That idea that the baby is, what do you say, seven or eight weeks? They're left to their own devices. Is that relatively common in animals of that size? Or is that very early? They're born with their spines, but just underneath a layer of edemic skin, so fluid-filled skin. Because actually, if you had hedgehogs born totally without spines, then they're defenceless. Whereas with you, when you've got this fluid-filled skin, the fluid is absorbed and the spines appear through the skin.

So they have a small defense quite quickly. I mean, if you look how fast birds turn around, I mean, they're fledged within a few weeks. This is very, very quick. I don't think that's unusual at all. What do they eat? So hedgehogs, they are insectivores. They're primate carnivorous animals. They principally eat in macroinvertebrates. But it does depend what you're analyzing. Hedgehog feces, which luckily I don't do that sort of thing

anymore, I'll pass that over to Sophie. You'll find out they eat a whole bunch of other things, too. But so yeah, it's the bigger bugs and beasts, but they will eat all sorts of things. I've collected stories of hedgehogs, you know, noshing on carrion, grabbing hold of a mouse which was injured, trying to eat a chicken, which was a friend of mine heard a commotion coming from his chicken coop and he'd found a big hedgehog just underneath the coop with one of the chickens legs in his mouth pulling pulling pulling and he said that was the first flying hedgehog in Essex that was. It's funny sir because they don't seem to me to be things that are built for hunting but they they hunt so they're quite fast when they have to be. Yeah yeah

they can run really fast and and usually you wouldn't notice their very long legs, but if they decide to run, they do have very long legs. Can I say these things are all relative? They'll run about as fast as we can walk. They're astonishing, aren't they, because you see them and they're like a little mound and then when they decide to run, they lift up and these great long legs are suddenly apparent and they sprint off. It's a great surprise how speedy they are. That's like when you see an owl after it's died and someone ever takes the feathers out and you go,

it was all feathers. Do you pluck a lot of owls? Of course I do. My dad was a keen fan of taxidermy. If he ever found anything that was dead by the side of the road, he would go and get it stuffed, which is I think one of the reasons he drove so erratically. And honestly, this is true, right, at my dad's old house, that it looks like even Norman

Bates would have gone, that's enough owls now, Nigel. And so the first time that we had it, and actually we did look after a tawny owl as well that was injured when I was little. And actually that bit of just, I didn't really pluck little and actually that bit of just I didn't really pluck it but that bit of just You touch and you go. Oh, this is what an incredible bit of evolution to go I'm gonna look this big and again like the hedgehog the the um, that's one of the beautiful things I think when you observe nature, which is finding out the Unexpected that we have a certain picture in our mind and then I don't if you ever find those moments So if you go,

you know, each time you must still have moments of incredible revelation as to what lies behind the image we have in our mind. Yeah, definitely, especially because people consider the hedgehogs really cute, right? But they are actually also ferocious predators sometimes. I've seen recordings of a hedgehog taking on an adult pigeon and a blackbird and winning Actually and eating the bird together both in the picture Runs completely counted to my picture of hedgehogs that is a capture in a pigeon You've got to be very very fast. That's sort of thing that the cat does

In a pigeon you've got to be very very fast. That's sort of thing that the cat does Yes, how do they how do they hunt have you seen them hunt a pigeon? What's it do is it stealth or is it just pure lightning speed? Leaves a few bread crumbs thinks that pigeon idiots gonna be down any moment now. What is the huntsy? That's what I want to know the hunting strategy of a hedgehog So the hunting strategy of the hedgehog is basically to eat what it finds. And they will snuffle and they will eat their scent lead, their principal scent, and they will just be taken to whatever's in front of them. So whether it is small little slugs that don't tend to eat the big ones because they will eat any beetles, things which crop up in front of them.

I imagine with something like a pigeon, the pigeon was more like, it's not going to do anything, of course it did, bloody hell it did, is more of the case of sort of shock and horror of that sort of hunting animal. I saw a hedgehog one late one night in the doorway of a shed in our garden and it was up on its back legs and it was doing something weird. I approached with caution and it had something gooey, it looked like a slug but I don't know if it was, but it was something viscous and grey and it coated it with bubbles of saliva and it was smearing it all over itself. They do this thing called self-anoint. I don't know why they self-anoint but anyway it looked absolutely gross because

it had coated its prickles with this gray bubbly slime. I thought you might just like to know that. Well, so did the question there, why do they self-anoint? So the thing is we really don't know but we assume that it's to mask their own smell, you know, to protect themselves against predators. So they they really do like to self-anoint. Whenever they come across a very pungent smell, like feces, for example, they'll chew on that feces

and then bubble up and produce the saliva and just spread it all over their spines. So a sense of extra perfume, you could say. The self-anointing has actually been stimulated by distilled water. So it's whether it is actually masking scent or not, it's very hard to tell. It is very, very odd behavior. And I'm doing a local TV thing, cute hedgehog, rescue center, dusk. They'd willingly come to do it at dusk.

Really, really great. Hedgehog runs onto the lawn. They're filming the hedgehog about to be released into the wild. It runs up to chicken poo on the lawn, not on the chicken poo slathers itself in brown foamy stuff Just we're trying to tell a story about the cuteness of hedgehogs how we all need to help hedgehogs and they're just doing their Best to make themselves disgusting. Well, what are their primary predators? Well apart from us in this country, it's simply the badger Well apart from us, in this country it's simply the badger and the Western European edgehog also has the eagle owl as a potential predator as well but not we haven't got enough eagle

owls here to be a problem. Because I wondered why they would perhaps mask their scent but it's essentially badgers. And badgers have got pretty good sense of smell so I mean they can they'll be able to track down a hedgehog whether it's rolled in chicken poo or not. And you mentioned, you mentioned the hedgehog population in Denmark and also in the UK. We almost see them, I suppose, as a really, a native animal, almost an icon of here in Britain. But what is the, where do they spread out across the world? Where do we find hedgehogs? Well, all sorts of places except for the Americas I would say and so you have up to 19 species depending on who you ask so so we do have

a lot of hedgehogs but definitely the European hedgehog is the species that has been most focused on regarding research. In terms of the different species so if we had them spread out, how do they range? They range in size, do they range in color, what are the differences? Yeah, yeah, so size and coloration as well. Some eat insects primarily, some don't, so it's a bit different, but it's still, it's a hedgehog, you can definitely tell. But there are hedgehogs in, I mean certainly the Middle Eastern hedgehogs and North African hedgehogs, which have got long ears.

I mean they are particularly cute looking. They're so cute. And then there's, I mean the hedgehogs, they're an old world species. So from the west coast of Ireland all the way across to China, from Norway down to South Africa. There are hedgehogs in the Americas, but they're pet hedgehogs and they are generally confused. And the hedgehogs on New Zealand are the hedgehogs in the Americas, but they're pet hedgehogs and they are generally confused

And the hedgehogs on New Zealand are the hedgehogs that people from the colonists arrived in New Zealand and went this place He's gorgeous. What we missing we're missing hobbits We're seeing elves missing hedgehogs and so they wrote back to England and said please send hedgehogs and they did Which was a very bad idea It's just I don't think of hedgehogs as being on my top five list of things I miss when I'm away. I think this says more about you. Yes. Anyway, sorry, you were talking about the hedgehogs of New Zealand.

Oh yes, and so they'd say they arrived, and it was very much a case of the acclimatisation societies of New Zealand. They wrote back and said, you know, send us various things that we're missing, and the hedgehog was part of it. And for a long time they were considered the most benign of the introduced species. But now, as Pam said in the beginning, they are unfortunately killing hedgehogs as part of a conservation program to try and stop the massive destruction of the indigenous wildlife of New Zealand.

Oh, see, now I understand why they made them feel more at home, because there's nothing that makes a colonial person feel more at home than the destruction of the indigenous so meow Pam what this is I wanted to break there was something in the verse of the poem that you did at the beginning which I found very Interesting which is you talked about the hole in your wall. Yeah, it's it's one of the really good things you can do I mean the best thing, in my opinion, for what it's worth is to leave out water. The most important thing they need,

especially this weather, is a bowl of fresh water that they can rely on, not one that you forget about tomorrow. You know, to leave out fresh water, it's a simple thing, but it's really important. And also to make some sort of hole in your fence or wall so that the hedgehogs can get can travel over a bigger distance and meet other hedgehogs otherwise the gene pool becomes really very tiny. So if you can

help them to forage over the large areas that they need to in order to find food and to find a mate. If you're prepared to cut a little hole in your fence, then that's a really good thing to do. And when we moved into our house, we downsized recently and the first thing I did was I went round to my neighbour and said, please, can I make an hole in the wall? And he very kindly didn't mind. So we've got quite a nice little hole in the wall with a lintel my dear so it's very smart.

Yeah so it's a really good thing because it enables them to travel and to meet other hedgehogs. So they can move over two kilometers a night quite easily, hedgehogs they'll travel great distances and so there's an entire campaign which I help manage called Hedgehog Street, which is doing exactly this sort of thing. It's getting those 13 centimeter holes put into the bottom of fences and bottoms of walls. Because we've discovered if you want a viable population of hedgehogs, you need about a garden of about a square kilometer. You probably don't have a garden quite that big. But you may have enough friends in your street and in your neighboring streets and across the neighborhood to be able to make up enough gardens joining together to create hedgehog

streets all over the place. And so there are thousands and thousands of people now signed up to the Hedgehog Street campaign which is run by the British Hedgehog Preservation Society and the People's Trust for Endangered Species. If you have a square kilometre, let's say, of a connected garden, how many hedgehogs would you expect to find there or how many could it support? Well it's how many you need is the work that's being done it's a minimum viable population analysis and it's 30 32 as dr. Tom Morehouse's work looking at running models on the

minimum requirements for these things and that's in the best habitat which happens to be suburbia we actually if you look at our rural landscape their requirements for hedgehogs are far greater because there's so much less food out there. Yeah, and they can survive. So what you need is a really, really good wild garden with lots of opportunities to make nests and a lot of biodiversity. Because as we mentioned earlier, the hedgehogs feed on insects, and we're in the middle of

the sixth mass extinction right so so what are the head sharks actually feeding on nowadays and and that's a very important question to answer and I have the solution to that because I've gathered a lot of head shark poo I love head shark poo you can get all sorts of questions and answers through head shark poo and looking at the DNA in the head shark poo. Looking at the DNA in the head shark poo, you can actually tell exactly what the head sharks have been eating. Because what are they surviving on nowadays if the insects are disappearing? Are they surviving on the cat food that people serve them in the garden as

supplementary feeding or do they survive on something else? I just need somebody to finance the project and I'm all set to go. I have all the poo samples ready in the freezer. I wanted to go back because it's come up a few times now, the inbreeding and you mentioned this problem obviously we presume in biology that inbreeding is not good. So what are the problems that arise from that? Yeah so that's a really interesting question because in the Danish population from the Danish Hedgehog project Which I told you about where people had collected almost 700 dead hedgehogs

We could tell that the population in Denmark is really inbred compared to to hedgehogs In other European countries and it's actually to the point where the Danish hedgehogs have the same genetic diversity level as the around 40 individuals living in Regions Park. So it's potentially a huge problem. But all my research so far hasn't shown any real effects on this. So when we look at, for example, the level of endoparasites in the hedgehogs, we didn't see an effect on the inbreeding on these individuals and the age as well. So the question is whether it's just because the Danish population is in general is very inbred or whether the effects are not that large.

So I hope to be able to look further into that as well in the future. Is that because the Danish build better fences? So there's just no holes in the fence. So great carpentry has put the hedgehog in peril. Well, in Denmark we really like hedges. So it's actually not a problem, but Denmark consists of a lot of islands. And even though hedgehog sharks are excellent swimmers

I don't expect them to cross between the islands. So that might be the explanation and also the general fragmentation of the landscape with all the roads we're building and everything and we could see from the Danish project here that The head sharks living in the rural areas. We just claimed that the rural areas are not really suitable habitats for head sharks anymore, but the Danish head sharks living in the rural areas were actually less inbred. And that's probably because they get to move around more freely in the rural areas in search for mates. It's very hard to attract head sharks.

I spent the entire life savings on a piece of land in 2019 to manage for wildlife and it's like an oasis in the middle of lots of arable fields and it's really lush you know and there's hedges we've laid the hedges and they've grown up lovely and thick we planted lots of trees and there's a pond and you'd think the hedgehogs would sprint in from all directions but they haven't. I've only found, I was delighted one day because I found what I thought was a hedgehog but it had been completely eviscerated. It was just a shell so presumably a badger or a fox with the big claws had just taken all the meaty bits out and left

the shell. I don't know what else I can do you know it's full of insects it's seething with insects and black beetles and all the things that you think a hedgehog would enjoy but so far none have come but I will let you know if any arrive. Must be annoying you've written a book about them as well it's like you've really put the effort in. Yeah I know it's very upsetting it is. It's not a very big book, mine, but this is my little book. Do you think that's what the problem is, that the hedgehogs go, tell you what, once it's an epic poem, Pam, then we'll pop round. Yeah, that's right. They say we're not bothering with that. That's drivel, they say.

I've written three books about hedgehogs and I have none coming to my garden in East Oxford either. The reason with you, though, they go, oh, we'll be prodding us and sniffing our poo and all of that and then we've heard about all the we all end up losing our penises and everything. Pam was saying you're seeing courting hedgehogs and she leave them to it it's like really oh no go to watch that oh I've gone too far now sorry. This does bring us to the question of what what can be done as Pam said you can you can do everything you think you need To do with the hedgerows and the insects. So what should we do? Especially we have gardens but in any case to encourage hedgehogs and to protect them Does there are small things we can do over the pockets of land we have agency over? So yes make your garden as Sophie and Pam have both described you make your garden hedgehog friendly, making sure that the landscape is

connected. It's much harder over the areas you don't have agency. So it's actually one of the reasons I really enjoy talking about hedgehogs is because I get invited to the Wims Institute. I do enjoy cake. That's one of my problems. I go and eat cake. But they'll invite me to talk about hedgehogs because everybody loves hedgehogs. They're the most popular animal in the country, the wild animal. And what they've ended up doing is they're inadvertently, I've created a Trojan hedgehog. Because I'm actually turning up to talk about all the things we wouldn't normally talk about. So macroinvertebrate population decline, about the choices we have in our diets. Choices we make about what we eat determines how well

hedgehogs are going to be able to thrive on these things. Heavy meat-based diets actually destroy our native fauna. A transport infrastructure, the national planning policy framework, all of these things I get to talk about to the WI. And we even get onto the necessity of dismantling industrial capitalism, though that tends to generate a nervous laugh from them by that stage, and they start to usher me out the door.

But I tend to carry on speaking anyway. But it's on many levels. Why do we give him so much cake? With sugar rush that will never end. But in terms of what we can do, it's about looking at the level you've got capacity to work on. So join the Hedgehog Street campaign. Support the hedgehog rescues.

Join the British Hedgehog Preservation Society. All are really useful. But talking to local councils, local authorities who manage the bigger areas of land, we've even got a football league going now, the British Hedgehog Preservation Society. They've got a football league, it's fantastic. And we've got various football teams all joining in, doing their work, doing their best to try and encourage hedgehogs. I mean, we're not expecting hedgehogs actually on the pitch.

That would be dangerous. They get tangled up in the nets, don't they Hugh? They get tangled up in football nets. The nets that are left out on the grass, they get entangled in them and they can just get trapped and die. And the same with that very fine green netting that people grow sweet peas and such like up.

A friend of mine brought me a couple of little hedgehogs in the village and they'd got entangled in this green fine netting and it was all cutting into their necks and I couldn't begin to tackle it so I took it to the wildlife hospital and they got it all off but it's a question of lifting that stuff up away from the ground where they can get tangled up in it. And Sophie, the same question to you. Well, I would obviously go for support the hedgehog research as well, because we need to discover what the challenges are and what we can do to mitigate this.

Can I ask you, right at the beginning we mentioned, you mentioned robotic lawnmowers. So what is this development in terms of finding something which basically, is this about creating lawn mowers that will not, which are able to detect hedgehogs, for instance? Yes, so this is actually a research project I'm doing right now. So the robotic lawn mowers are hugely popular in mainland Europe and they're also coming to the UK.

And it turned out that some of the models of robotic lawn mowers actually can hurt the hedgehogs. And people tend to let them run at night because it's very convenient. Then they get the lawns mowed and they're not, you know, troubling them during the day. But this is when the hedgehogs are active. So I discovered that some

of these machines actually hurt the head sharks and I started a research project to develop head shark friendly robotic lawn mowers with the industry. Because I've spent a lot of time running over dead head sharks with robotic lawn mowers. So head sharks that had died in care and because they were sadly too ill to save. And then I've just tested all these different robotic lawnmowers to discover so which features of these robotic lawnmowers can we actually improve to make them more hedgehog friendly. And we've also developed a crash test dummy called Spike, which can be 3D printed and used by the industry when they develop these robotic lawnmowers. That's why I love stories like this.

It's lovely, isn't it? Pam, you know, it sounds to me like, you know, the solace of nature is incredibly important to you, you know, talking about your Jack Russell, seeing the birth, et cetera. And has it played, do you think, a major part as well in just in the poetry that you create as well? Because I know you've written a lot of poems, you know, which are looking at nature and helping us sharpen our kind of senses to the things that are around us. Well, I'm very interested in wildlife and I try and try and protect it in a small way. I don't think I do write quite a lot about animals, but I write because I like animals.

I've always been interested in animals. I have written two poems about hedgehogs. The first one was a very long time ago is the one that people often ask me to perform, but it's a bit frivolous and I feel guilty about it now. Would you like me to do it? Yeah, maybe audience judge. No, I mean, it's weird talking about a poem and they're not doing it, but I feel kind of awkward about this now and embarrassed. But in the 70s, when people never thought there was any threat to hedgehogs and saw, I wrote this, I am very fond of hedgehogs, which makes me want to say,

that I am struck with wonder how there's any left today, for each morning as I travel, on no short distance that, all I see are hedgehogs, squashed and dead and flat. No, hedgehogs are not clever. No, hedgehogs are quite dim. And when he sees your headlamps,

well, it don't occur to him that the very wisest thing to do is up and run away. No, he curls up in a stupid ball and no doubt starts to pray. Well, motor cars do travel at a most alarming rate, and by the time you see him, it is very much much too late and thus he gets squashed and recorded but for me with me pen and paper sitting up a tree. It is statistically proven in chapter and in verse that in a car and hedgehog fight the hedgehog comes off worse. When whistling down your prop shaft and bouncing off your diff his coat

of nice brown prickles is not effective." So I think that's enough of that really. It does go on, but anyway that gives you a break. We've run out of time which means that we now go to the audience question and today we asked, head chugs have a great defense mechanism if you could evolve the perfect defense mechanism what would it be? This is always exciting for me to find out how someone manages to get a pun involving D reams top hit things can only get better. There will be one I'm sure let's find out. Transmogrifying into a jar of marmite not perfect but it does give you a 50% chance of survival.

Thank you, Paul. I like this one which is born of our current predicament I think in the world. Sonic boom tutting. To see answer please select all the boxes that contain traffic lights. A smell, a very, very bad smell because stinks can only get better. Oh! Thank you. Oh! Thank you, Patrick.

I knew it would happen. We never look at these beforehand. I'm always just waiting. Barb's that eject out because pings can only, I really wasn't expecting this number. Pings can only get better. wasn't expecting this number. Pings can only get better. Thank you very much for all those, particularly the puns. Thank you very much to our panel, Hugh Warwick, Sophie London-Rasmussen

and Pam Ayres. APPLAUSE And for the listeners at home, we will put photographs of the hedgehog penis on the BBC website. It's going to be a good one actually, because it's going to be pictures of penises, which is really not the market we used to go for. So next week, we are going to be looking at stars, probably, or toads, or arsenic. we don't know the honest truth is recording this a long way in advance aren't we yes I'll just give it lots of next week we're gonna be looking at the Proxima Centauri next week we're gonna be looking at Betelgeuse

yeah I'm gonna be looking at Charles Darwin as we record this as we record this in late June of 2024 we don't even know who the next government will be It's on a knife edge, isn't it? Based on Brian's political donations because he's hedged his bets I can just tell you that next week you'll be joined by me Robin Innes and him Lord Cox of Oldham and Proximus and Tura Thank you. Bye. APPLAUSE MUSIC In the infinite monkey cage.

Turned out nice again. Imagine a scrap of data that could help rescue a man lost at sea. That far north, most people aren't found. This is a race against the clock. Or expose staggering financial fraud. All the Swiss banks, the British banks, the French banks. What I was looking at was a horror show. Or uncover a medical breakthrough.

Within 10 years, the whole world was convinced that he was right. 10 extraordinary adventures of data and discovery. Uncharted with me, Hannah Fry on Radio 4, now available on BBC Sounds.