There’s more to hedgehogs than being vibrant croquet balls in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and their adorable acts in certain Hollywood animated movies. Hedgehogs play important roles in the ecosystem with their distinct ecology, dietary habits, and behaviour; they’re considered ecological indicators.
They feed on soil invertebrates, so a significant decline in hedgehogs implies the quality of the environment has greatly decreased. Their roles as both prey and predator are significant for the ecological balance of the arid dry regions in which they occur.
Consider this: being an omnivore, they relish insects and can chomp down up to 40 insects in an hour. It is no surprise, then, that they are considered a farmer’s best friend, playing the part of a natural pest control with military precision. Despite their spiky exterior, they can satiate the hunger of grassland, scrubland and desert predators such as the Indian fox, jackal, and mongoose.
Little-known habitat specialist
Characterised by the abundance of small spines covering their entire body, excluding the face, legs, and underbelly, as well as their pig-like snout, hedgehogs are classified under the order Eulipotyphla and family Erinaceidae, and are found in Asia, Africa, and Europe. There are three species of hedgehogs in India: the Indian long-eared or collared hedgehog (Hemiechinus collaris); the Indian hedgehog (Paraechinus micropus); and the bare-bellied hedgehog, also known as the Madras hedgehog or South Indian hedgehog (Paraechinus nudiventrus), explains ecologist Brawin Kumar, a long-term hedgehog researcher.
The Indian hedgehog is known to occur in the Desert National Park in Rajasthan and the Narayan Sarovar Sanctuary in Gujarat, whereas the collared hedgehog is primarily found in Rajasthan and the Desert National Park. Kumar says the bare-bellied hedgehog is endemic to southern India, occurring only in the arid regions of the five states in the south, with the highest number of sightings reported from Tamil Nadu.
Taking pride in knowing the animals in his locality, Kumar advocates for everyone to have an understanding of the biodiversity that lives in their neighbourhoods. “They’re very interesting. If you touch them, they go into a ball, like a pangolin,” he says. Another distinctive feature of the hedgehog is that they are nocturnal and have a limited home range of about two to three kilometres. “They complete their entire life cycle within that range,” Kumar adds.
A 2024 paper led by Kumar describes the habitat of the bare-bellied hedgehog as varied – from grasslands, savannahs, and open shrublands to thorn forests, small hillock foothills, pasture lands, and urban areas. “Madras hedgehogs primarily occur in the South Deccan Plateau dry deciduous forests and Deccan thorn scrub forests in Tamil Nadu,” the paper notes.
A recently published paper reports three new locality records of bare-bellied hedgehogs in the Tirunelveli district of Tamil Nadu where direct sightings were made in arid grassland sites at Samugarengapuram, Koonthankulam and Moolaikkadu. This new finding expands the prevalent understanding of their rage in the district.
Sankaranarayanan, a researcher at the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment, who led the study, says it was an opportunistic study where he chanced upon the animal while doing harrier monitoring in those grasslands. These sightings are significant because, of the 13 districts in Tamil Nadu where the presence of bare-bellied hedgehogs have been recorded from, direct sightings have been reported only from 11 locations. The paper notes that the three locations add to the understanding of the species distribution which is crucial in developing conservation strategies.
Facing multiple threats
The sightings also give us a peek into the habitats of the bare-bellied hedgehog; the sites are some of India’s southernmost grasslands and represent the final remnants of tropical grasslands across Asia, according to the paper. Sankaranarayan told Mongabay India that habitat fragmentation and land use change are the foremost threats to the species.
“They rely on open natural ecosystems that are rapidly being converted into agricultural lands, for agroforestry practices as well as developmental projects,” he says, adding that they are also widely hunted, primarily due to superstitious beliefs surrounding the medicinal properties of hedgehog meat and spines and for the pet trade.
“The meat of the hedgehog is believed to cure respiratory illnesses such as asthma and whooping cough. Some people also dry the spines, powder them, and mix them with honey to give to children to cure respiratory diseases. Their dried skins are hung in front of houses, as it is believed to ward off evil forces,” he says. The paper notes that hedgehogs are also increasingly falling victim to roadkill.
Additionally, ticks and parasites pose a significant threat to hedgehog populations, Kumar explains. “As these external parasites feed on hedgehogs’ blood, they cause blood loss, anaemia, and transmit diseases like tick-borne relapsing fever. This can weaken hedgehogs’ immune systems, making them more vulnerable to other infections and reducing their reproductive success. Severe infestations can lead to nutritional deficiencies, alter their behaviour, and even increase mortality rates, ultimately contributing to declining populations,” he says, adding that many severe ticks infested hedgehogs were found in the Tiruppur district in 2024.
The bare-bellied hedgehog, or the Madras hedgehog, is listed as a species of least concern on the IUCN Red List of threatened species, despite the fact that their population is largely unknown. Kumar advocates for population estimation and more studies on the species to develop conservation strategies.
In a detailed conservation plan prepared by Kumar and sent out to all district/divisional forest officers in Tamil Nadu in 2021-2022, he mentions various conservation measures to be taken for the protection of this endemic species. The report highlights that “the recent amendment of the Indian Wildlife (Protection) Amendment Act, 2022, has promoted the bare-bellied hedgehog to Schedule II from its former place under Schedule IV, reflecting recognition of its increased conservation significance.”
Some of the conservation strategies listed in the plan include better research in terms of population estimation and understanding the threats, field-based research work, establishing a research centre focused on Madras hedgehog studies, and a hedgehog conservation breeding programme, to name a few.
He also recommends removing the Madras hedgehog from the list of vermin in the Indian Wildlife Protection Act and upgrading the protection status of the species. Other recommendations in the plan include establishing a conservation reserve in the semi-arid landscapes of Tamil Nadu and a small mammal research museum in the state, in addition to declaring a national hedgehog day and a national mission for the conservation of hedgehogs.
“Not many people know about hedgehogs, and some confuse them with porcupines,” Sankaranarayan concludes while emphasising the need for concerted efforts to protect the species.
This article was first published on Mongabay.
