Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean

Huge savings on Dell AI PCs with Intel Core ultra processors are here, and they are newly designed to help you do more faster.

They can generate code, edit images, multitask without lag, draft emails, summarize documents, create live translations, and even extend your battery life.

That's the power of Dell AI with Intel Inside.

Upgrade today by visiting dell.com slash deals.

What's in my stomach, you ask?

Ritual vitamins.

Daily?

It's my multai of choice.

They have an essential for women 18 plus.

It contains nine key ingredients my bod needs.

They're in two delayed release capsules.

They're these little beads and kind of oil.

They look like a lava lamp.

They also have a minty flavor and they are designed to be gentle on the stomach.

Something I like, especially if you take your multai every morning as you're running out the door.

Or some people take it at night.

I'm also trying to eat more protein.

They have essential protein daily shakes, which I love.

It's vegan and it won the Purity Award, which is one of the strictest certifications.

I love that Ritual is a female-founded B Corp, and I love that they're like, here are the essentials you need, so I make it part of my having a good day.

And instead of striving for perfect health, you can aim for supporting foundational health and get 25% off your first month only at ritual.com/slash ologies.

You can start ritual or add essential for women 18 plus to your subscription today.

That's ritual.com slash ologies for 25% off.

These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration.

This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.

We have to say that.

Oh, hey, it's yesterday's medication in your jeans pocket.

Oops, Alley Ward.

Let's stab ourselves with information from a porcupine's business end.

We have a good one.

What a chat.

I remember getting off this interview and being like, this is, this is why I make the show.

You're in for a treat.

Okay, so we've got an associate professor from San Luis Obispo's California Polytechnic State University, Cal Poly, who teaches courses like Introduction to Wildlife Conservation and Administration.

They studied ecology, evolution, and environmental biology at Columbia University.

They headed to UC Berkeley for a master's and PhD in environmental science, policy, and management.

Bonus, they specialize in rodents.

What does that have to do with porcupines?

Everything.

Porcupines are rodents.

What?

Yep, big, beautiful, barbed, rat-like creatures, and we love them.

Thank you also to Sarah Listener Berman.

to listener Sarah Berman who suggested this ologist, singing their praises of their porcupine enthusiasm.

So we're going to get to it in a sec, but first thank you so much to everyone who sends in questions, audio ones as well.

You can submit them at patreon.com/slash ologies.

Thanks to everyone wearing ologies merch from ologiesmerch.com.

And thanks to everyone who leaves reviews for the show, which helps us so much.

Like this one from NJ Roadrunner who wrote, if science could embody itself as a warm hug, this show would be it.

Also want to shout out Snake Spruel who left the review, I'm 11 years old and I love this podcast.

No, I'm not kidding.

No, I do not listen to Smologies.

No, I do not listen to the bleeped ones.

Yes, I actually understand it.

You keep doing you, Allie.

Snakes Rule, I'm a fan of you and of snakes.

Okay, for those who are looking though for kids' safe episodes, just a reminder that we have Smologies.

It's available wherever you subscribe to podcasts.

It's a spin-off show.

You can look for the green cover art.

Okay, porcupines.

So, porcupines, news to me, get their name from the Latin for thorn pig.

But the oligarchy, this, let's just say erythrozynology, which comes from the Greek for irritating.

There's two major groups of porcupines.

We're going to include both in this episode, but mostly we're focusing on the genus Erythrazon.

Is that cool?

Okay, great.

So get suited up for a thrilling array of weird stories involving barbs, grunts, squeaks, cartoonish noses, romantic gestures that will leave you wanting to bleach your brain, counting quills, male models, flim flam about quill removal, how to spot a porcupine in the wild, and so much more with professor, ecologist, and erythrozynologist, Dr.

Tim Bean.

Tim Bean, he, him.

Do you get called Jim Bean a lot?

Jim Bean, yeah.

And then sometimes like Kim for some reason for to-go orders.

Confusing.

Tim, Kim, Jim Beam.

Yeah.

As long as it's not Mr.

Bean, I'm fine.

Do people ever call you Dr.

Porcupine?

No, no.

I feel like that's a really good Marvel character.

Just like shooting quills out of your wrists at people.

Yeah, well, we'll get to that, right?

Like what they, yeah.

Okay, actually, porcupines, I feel like underneath their quills, they got to be the cuddliest little babies.

Yeah, I think that's what makes them so compelling is like they are dopey and lovable and sweet and almost apologetic about the fact that they're unhuggable.

If you wanted to be in, in some sort of

close relationship with them, I feel like they would have avoidant attachment issues.

When I started this research, I was like literally to the point where I was Googling how do you pick up a porcupine and there is a there's a self-help book called How to Hug a Porcupine, Easy Ways to Love the Difficult People in Your Life.

Is there an easy way to handle a porcupine?

If you're a porcupine researcher, what kind of gloves are you working with?

Yeah, welding gloves, like thick, heavy leather gloves is generally the recommendation.

There's a spot under their tail that doesn't have any quills, and their tail is super strong.

It's almost like a fifth appendage that they use to help climb.

And so that's generally how people try to pick them up is like get your hand under the tail and grab them there and then you can kind of pick them up.

But at that point, like you got to anesthetize them if you're really going to handle them and measure them and put a collar on and all that stuff.

By under the tail, is that their junk necessarily, or is that in a different spot?

No, their junk is hidden away most of the time.

So it's actually like retracted into the body, which makes it easier to climb, right?

Like they're right up against the tree when they're climbing.

Must I remind us of the 2024 Paris Pole Moulter, whose victory was thwarted by his own generous nethers, a self-betrayal of Olympic proportions.

But Tim says that a porcupine's tail, which is about the size of a mitten, is covered in quills on the top, but on the flip side, it's just a haven of only guard hairs and in the colder months, some soft, fuzzy fur.

Are quills types of hairs or are they modified scales?

I mean, I'm going to get right into it because I'm like, I, what the fuck is going on?

Yeah, they are.

They're modified hairs.

So they're made of keratin.

And you sort of look at the evolutionary lineage of porcupines.

And there's like these species called spiny rats that have spines that are closely related.

And then you can kind of see like other porcupines have less evolved quills.

And then you've got the North American porcupines that have these really highly modified quills that are really awful if you get them in you.

Really?

What are they like?

So North American porcupine quills have backwards-facing barbs.

The quill itself is sharp.

It gets in you.

And then there are these backward-facing barbs that make it very difficult and painful to pull back out.

And then they also, the backward-facing barb means that if you don't pull it out, the quill will start to work its way into you further and further or your dog.

And then that becomes a real problem if it actually gets in your body and you got to go in and get it out.

So at the very tip of an erythozontidae or North American porcupine's quills, are hundreds upon hundreds of tiny barbs.

And for more on those, if you must, you can see the 2012 paper, Micro-structured barbs on the North American porcupine quill enable easy tissue penetration and difficult removal.

There you go.

Now, the genus Hystrix, or African porcupines, sometimes called old world porcupines, no barbs, in case you have a choice of which type of porcupine can shank you.

Oof.

Okay, you've mentioned other porcupines, and you mentioned North American porcupines.

I know you study North American ones, but are there Eurasian porcupines?

Are there South American porcupines?

Are there African porcupines?

Yeah, all of those.

And it's really confusing.

So there's two families, capital F, of porcupines.

There's the histricidae, which are the African Eurasian porcupines, and there's like 11 species of those.

And then totally separately is the family of North and South American porcupines, Erithizontidae,

where there's about 20 species of those.

And it's, man, I've been like looking the past week or two

because I always tell people that those two families, the like African and Eurasian porcupines and the North and South Americans, evolved separately and that they evolved quills independently from each other.

And like nobody seems to want to really go on record and say whether that's true or not or whether the like, you know, so they separated like 10 to 20 million years ago.

And I think we just don't really know whether that ancient rodent ancestor of the two groups had some form of quill and then they split and they continue to have quills or if they evolved independently.

But yeah, so around the world, there's like 30 species of porcupines, but they're very different.

The family of African and Eurasian porcupines are much bigger.

They're ground dwelling.

The quills are way longer.

They're like a foot long.

And I think they're more aggressive.

Like a lot of the videos of, you know, porcupine like attacking a leopard, those are generally African porcupines, Eurasian porcupines.

And then the North and South American porcupines are more arboreal.

They spend a lot of time in trees, eating leaves, much shorter quills.

So we got about 30 species of porcupine, and the African and North American ones are distantly related.

And then we got the South American ones with a big bulbous pink nose and a tail like a monkey.

African porcupines can weigh up to 66 pounds or 30 kilos and they're mostly veggie eaters who dig for roots and bulbs and they eat people's tuber crops or they forage for fruits or bark.

Sometimes an African porcupine will eat a dead body if it finds one, like roatkill.

And sometimes they hoard a bunch of bones to chew on in their den if they need minerals.

What's more goth?

Thousands of spikes, striking fear into the hearts of your foes, and gnawing on bones in your underground cave.

Not even bats can compete with that.

I did not know they went so hard.

I didn't know there were so many branches of porcupine.

Speaking of branches.

Do you think that the adaptations needed to be a ground dweller versus a tree dweller are different in terms of if you're in the ground, more things are going to come and try and eat you, but if you're in the trees, you're going to encounter fewer jackals and stuff?

Yeah, that's possible.

That definitely is possible, right?

Like the defense stuff is much more important if you're on the ground and you're out, you know, digging around for roots and stuff.

The other part of it is, at least for North American porcupines, they fall out of trees a lot.

Oh, babies.

So they're not super coordinated and they'll quill themselves.

And so,

yeah.

And so I think there's probably some benefit to having shorter quills in that case.

Like instead of breaking a bunch off when you fall on the ground, like having shorter ones that are at least somewhat protected by the outer guard hairs is probably better.

Oh, that's so embarrassing.

It's sad.

I mean, so there's this incredible book by Aldous Rose, U-L-D-I-S-R-O-Z-E, called The North American Porcupine.

He's a professor in New York City, and he talks about like he

examined porcupine skeletons in museums, and he was saying like a third of them have broken bones, which has got to be from falling out of trees.

Oh, my poor baby.

Do they have like hollow bird bones or they're just not that good at balance?

They're just not that good at balance.

Imagine wearing a headpiece that is like a fan made of barbed spears and it is your burden in life to bear.

Just trying to slink between branches to try to eat a salad made out of trees.

You're like weaving through an agility course, dressed like Rihanna at the Met Gala.

But if diamonds were needles.

The like best morsels are probably out at the end of the branches.

And so I think they're probably taking some risks going out on some thin limbs that they probably shouldn't be.

I'm never complaining again.

Ever.

When the quills come out in a predator, I've always wondered, do they just kind of pop out easily, like a Lego snapping off?

Or is it like painful, like getting

your mustache waxed?

For the porcupine, they have this special mechanism where like they're not just going to come out day to day.

You actually have to push into the skin.

So like something pushes on the top of the quill and then that like releases the muscle that's holding it in and then they come out.

Oh.

So it is sort of like waxing your mustache or legs or whatever.

If you just pulled a quill out, that would probably be super painful.

But if they take their tail and like thwack a dog's face, that like engages this release mechanism that I think probably does not hurt.

The porcupines, at least.

The dog would like to have a word.

Oh, God.

How did you get into porcupines?

Of all things, I know that you work on a few different animals, kangaroo rats.

But how did your path lead you down this spiny road?

Yeah.

So the practical answer is when I was applying for my first faculty job at Humboldt State,

Everybody's asking me, like, what are you going to study when you get up here?

And I'm giving all these like lame, half-assed answers because I just don't ever want to think about research again

and then finally the final night second night we go out to dinner with like all the other faculty in the department and they ask again like what are you going to study if you get up here and I just it popped into my head I had seen this talk a couple years ago by this guy Rick Schweitzer who does a lot of conservation work in the Sierras and had done his graduate work on porcupines in Nevada And he was saying, we don't see porcupines anymore.

Like they're not where they used to be in the Sierras.

And so I just blurted out like, I don't know, maybe porcupines.

And that clicked.

Like, everyone around the table was like, oh, that's such a great idea.

Like, porcupines would be amazing.

Like, the students could go out, they can do these behavioral observations.

It's such a cool species.

And all the tribes in the area, like the Hoopa and the Yurok and the Karuk, have all been asking, like, where are the porcupines?

We used to have porcupines here and we can't find them anymore.

So that was sort of, I don't know if it got me the job, but it was just sort of this like light bulb moment.

And so, yeah, started research up there when I got the job.

Do you think that there was something in you that made you say it because everyone knows that porcupines are cool

yeah i mean yeah they are they're super cool and they're sort of they're kind of like you know we talk about like a comics comic or a writer's writer like i think porcupines are kind of i think the species that a lot of ecologists really like, but they're sort of underappreciated and understudied.

You know, everybody loves porcupines.

And also the thrill of the unapproachability of them.

Yeah.

So porcupines are your favorite ecologists' favorite ecology.

And I have seen many photos and videos of porcupines willingly because they live in my heart.

And some of them have faces like a Japanese cartoon with a tiny nose that's sometimes brown and fuzzy.

They got little...

teensy fidgeting hands.

Other porcupines have a nose that looks like an oversized pink marshmallow.

What's going on with their nose?

Why so big and cute?

So they need to be able to smell really well.

And some of the noses of like porcupine accounts on social media, I think some of those are South American species where they have this like big bald nose that's kind of sticking out.

North American porcupines also have really big noses, but they're furred, but they just need to have a really good sense of smell.

I mean, they're folivores.

Most of what they eat is leaves.

And so they need to be able to smell where the good leaves are and where the other porcupines are so yeah highly evolved nose to for scent is it soft it looks like a big pencil eraser but i want i want to touch it that's exactly what it feels like really

yeah i want to touch it i want to touch the marshmallow nosey what in your job necessitates getting to

common word boop but get to touch the nose of a porcupine like are they anesthetized and you have to make sure their nose is a certain temperature or is it purely just a perk of the job yeah the second one so um a lot of the research we were doing was like studying their ecology in this coastal dune forest in northern california and the best way to do that is to track them so we would catch them anesthetize them and get a radio collar on them and kind of you know just measure them for sex and reproductive status and and weight and ectoparasites and stuff like that and while they're sleeping you know you get to look at them and feel their nose and

see what the bottom of their feet look like and stuff like that.

How big are we talking when it comes to porcupines in general?

North American porcupines are like, it's really variable.

It's interesting.

Like northeastern, like New England porcupines, I think are a little bit smaller.

Alaskan porcupines can get up to about 20 or 30 pounds.

20 to 30 pounds is like the size of a corgi, but a corgi that's been bred with a sea urchin.

They're pretty big.

I mean, it's like the ones that we have in Northern California, like it definitely takes two arms to lift a large adult porcupine.

And two gloved arms.

Yeah.

And, you know, fleece and jacket and anything else that you can use to protect yourself.

How many times do you think you've been barbed?

Not that many.

So it turns out dogs are just really stupid.

Like it's really hard to get quelled, especially when they're anesthetized.

Like, like I said, you do have to like push it in to engage the release.

And so

when you're handling them and turning them over to examine the underside and stuff, like you'll definitely get quills that kind of just come out and stick in your shirt.

But to get truly quilled, it happened a few times to my students.

I never got like.

one really deeply embedded in my skin.

I did watch one YouTube video of Aldous Rose, another porcupine legend, and his capture method is to cover them with an old red igloo beer cooler, which slides shut.

And then from there, he can sedate them and then take them out and take measurements for like 20 or so minutes and then release them on their merry way.

Now, what if you get porcupined and you are a porcupine?

They have little paws that are good at grasping and they just got to do their best to reach the ones embedded by their enemies.

It's a risky life, but they are armed.

What kind of students do you have that are drawn to this field?

All kinds.

That's a really interesting question.

I think the stereotype of wildlife ecologists is generally people who would rather be around animals than other people.

And so I guess that goes sort of doubly for people who want to be around a quilled animal.

But yeah, all that, you know, it's a mix of undergraduates and master's students, and they've all been just incredible.

I mean, like so excited to work with the species and so curious.

And the porcupines we were studying just seemed to elicit this like really incredible curiosity about the species and the place they were living.

You know, I would go and visit and go up like during the summers when we were doing the research and they would be back at the field house and like they would just not stop talking about porcupines.

It was like maybe dinner, like talk about this porcupine we saw today.

Like after dinner, like let's think about this other thing that we haven't talked about.

I was like, you guys need to take a break from thinking about porcupines.

I can't stop.

Do you know that I just realized right now that a porcupine actually inspired this entire podcast to exist?

And I have not thought about it until right now.

Is that true?

Yes.

There was a guest named Phil Torres, who's amazing.

And he's on, now he's on Expedition Unknown on Discovery, but he studied butterflies in the jungle.

But he was a friend before I started this podcast.

And he once told the story about how he was studying butterflies in the jungles of Peru.

And he's also

hunky to the point where it's comical.

And he's married to like an absolutely beautiful Norwegian model.

And they're also incredibly nice, which is infuriating.

It's maddening because they're good people.

But to make his way through Cornell, he modeled for Abercrombie.

You're just like, fuck you, Phil.

And we love him.

Anyway, he was talking about once he was in the jungles of Peru and he had to chase a porcupine out of his hut with his acoustic guitar.

You were like, like gently nudge it out.

But I was like, if these are the type of stories that field biologists have, I need to hear more of them.

Cause the idea of like a shirtless Abercrombie model having to scoot a porcupine out of a hut with an acoustic guitar was like, those are the stories that need to be heard.

That was like, I, to follow up on that, like that also for me, it was when I was like 20, I was camping with my sister and some friends on the Appalachian Trail.

We were sleeping in this lean to and all night, there was this bizarre sound coming from underneath the lean to.

Like nobody slept.

We were afraid to look to see what it was.

And we just could not figure out what it was.

And then like years later, she called me and she was like, I was just watching this nature documentary and it was porcupines having sex.

Like

that's the noise that we heard.

all night long.

So yeah, I think like that's another appeal of porcupines is like, I just think everybody, especially ecologists who have been in the field for a long time, just have this sort of like, they have a story or a curiosity or a question that they maybe never got around to researching, but yeah, everybody's got one.

Well, all night long, was it like their anniversary or was there an orgy?

Their reproductive system is weird, so I can walk you through it.

Yeah.

So female porcupines are either pregnant or lactating 11 months out of the year.

Oh, God.

They have like for their body size, one of the longest pregnancy periods of any mammal.

So they're pregnant for about seven months and then lactating for four months and then they have a month off and then do it all over again.

11 months out of the year, preggers are nursing.

They get one month off.

Give these ladies a break, Mother Nature.

Why do you hate them?

Now, an elderly porcupine would be like 10 years old, but usually they only live to around five in the wild.

Now, the upside of that short life is you start early.

You're horny.

You're ready to reproduce at 18 months old.

But those uber maternal lady porcupines, though.

But they're only in estrus for like 12 hours every year.

Wow.

So what happens is they send out some pheromones in there or some kind of olfactory signal in their urine to say, I'm about to go into estrus.

Like if there's any males around.

And so that, again, is where the big nose comes in, as I think males who are a couple miles away can smell that.

Hello, ladies.

So the males start congregating.

And then there's a period of of competition where, you know, generally like the largest, I think like one of the older males generally dominates and wins access to the female.

Other males, you know, go away.

And then the male who wins pees on the female.

Oh!

Which

is documented in Marty Staufer's Wild America episode, The Prickly Porcupine.

You can see it for yourself if you really want to.

The young male catches the scent given off by a female.

The aroma of her vaginal mucus mixed with urine tells him that she's in estrus.

For his grand finale, the male anoints his intended in a shower of urine.

Witnesses to this bizarre ritual claim that powerful bursts may travel over six feet.

Which is thought to like stimulate estrus at like to actually happen.

And then

copulation takes about one to five minutes.

And then they're doing it for about eight hours.

And then they go their separate ways for another year.

Wait, if copulation takes one to five minutes and they're doing it for eight hours, is there a refractory period?

I imagine so.

Yeah.

So they'll do it and then take a couple minutes off or an hour off and then get back to it.

Wow.

Usually the same.

dominant male and then all the other ones who made the commute are just like well i guess bye yeah better luck next year.

What about their locomotion?

Because if they have a 12-hour window to make it a couple miles to maybe get a chance with a lady, are they just booking ass?

How are they getting there?

Well, I think that's what the peeing on the female does is like, is she goes into this sort of pre-estrous period that's like, I'm almost ready.

And then it's going to take a while for the males to get over here.

They are pretty slow.

They, yeah, they're slow.

It's going to take them a while to get there and figure out who's going to be the one with access.

So I think that's sort of the function of the peeing on the female is like, once all that's sorted out, now it's time to trigger the actual estris period.

So she like sends out a text.

She sends out a group text or tweet, and then she waits for them to uber their little asses over.

Anybody up?

Yeah.

Well, is it, how do they, with all of the quills,

are they just missionary style?

how are they doing that it's the rose delicately puts it the typical mammal position so if like the way dogs do it so she lifts her tail which again the bottom of it doesn't have any quills on it and then the male gets behind her and the bottom their stomach doesn't have quills on it either so it's sort of like quilless area to quilless area and then he yep enters from behind So remember the bottom of her tail is like a soft quill-less landing strip that she lays down on her own back for his little tender quill-less belly.

And he doesn't get quilled.

You know,

I'm sure it happens.

Yeah, that's awkward.

But for the most part, the muscles that would sort of like boyoyoing them are not going to be activated.

Right, exactly.

Okay.

That makes sense evolutionarily, right?

Because that would really be a conflict of interest.

Yep.

And that's probably partly why they don't have quills on the base of their tail and on their stomach as well.

The other interesting evolutionary thing about the quills is they're antibiotic and antibacterial.

So like, you know, you would sort of think that from a defense perspective, it would be great if they infected, you know, a mountain lion or a fisher or something that's trying to attack them.

But because they quill themselves so much, the thinking is they evolve these antibacterial properties so that they wouldn't infect themselves or their mate.

It's like Edward Scissor hands, but Edward syringe fingers.

And each one comes loaded with just a little doxycycline.

No copay.

Oh, what a bummer for them.

How long are they alive?

They can be pretty long-lived.

So Rose documented one that was like 20 years old, and they can live to 20 or 25 years in captivity.

Now, usually we save our patron audio questions for the second half, but who cares?

Nothing matters.

We're going to break the rules.

Let's lose our minds.

My mind's already lost.

Let's get unhinged.

Let's get rebellious with a Patreon question early.

Hi, this is Erin Ryan from Vancouver, and I grew up in a porcupine area, and I just want to know why I've never seen one, and if that seems unfair to you.

Thank you.

Yeah, Erin, it does.

I hate that for you.

Now, how do you not go to a zoo to see one?

How hard is it to see a porcupine?

Are they just up in the trees and good luck?

If you live in a snowy area, that's kind of the best time to see them because their tracks are so clear.

And so finding their tracks is a great way to find one.

Otherwise, they create these nip twigs.

So they'll sit, you know, sit in a tree and eat leaves all night.

And they'll like, you know, break a branch off, eat all the leaves, and then drop the branch to the ground.

So if you know what you're looking for, like a tree with a bunch of branches with leaves stripped off of them, that's probably a good place to look up.

Otherwise, yeah, or just like wait for your stupid dog to find one.

Does your dog know how to like go sniff them out?

Why are dogs getting porcupined so much?

I just saw a paper that said that was pretty breed specific.

Like

German shepherds and rottweilers, those are ones that are more, you know, somebody went through old vet records and said, oh, these are the breeds that are more likely to do it.

They stink.

So porcupines have this really unique warning odor that smells like nothing I've ever smelled before.

Really?

And so I think dogs are definitely responding to that.

While editing this episode, I spotted a note in the transcript left by lead editor Mercedes

She just wanted to tell me that her, quote, now-departed family dog, a standard poodle named Bentley, got quilled by the same dead porcupine three times.

She continues.

We lived in the country, and he would go off and find it in the woods.

My parents eventually had to comb the woods, she says, for the carcass so they could dump it somewhere far, far away.

Bentley was otherwise a very smart dog, but I guess that porcupine smell was just too hard to resist.

He also got skunked a few few times in his six years, she said, so I guess he was not smart when it came to his snow.

Mercedes wanted to tell me that.

I wanted to tell you that.

Mercedes, that's insane, and I love it.

Also, if you're just now realizing that you have a special interest in the musk of large rodents, you can enjoy our recent castorology episode on beavers, in which we discuss at length how their internal scent sacs made it into your ice cream way back then.

Anyway, let's return to that thorn pig stink.

when you say nothing i've ever smelled before i understand that there then that means that none of us can possibly understand but would you say it's closer to the skunk closer to the a uh the fragrance of a rose uh fruity musky yeah

the chemical composition supposedly has like components of walnuts and pineapple or coconut or something but like

You got to take that and like ferment it in a dead rat for a while to really get it.

the it's like sweet and musky as a field ecologist who is looking for porcupines if you start to smell that on the wind

are you excited

i guess to the point where it's like okay i'm getting a signal there's a porcupine hidden in the tree above me somewhere i think i can smell it yeah great I looked around to find some other olfactory analogs to porcupine essence, and I saw it suggests a strong cheese mixed with weed and barnyard animals.

But the most compelling comparison I read was from a wildlife rehabber on Reddit who described it as just like human body odor and ripe.

So a squeaky, grunting gym bag that can pierce your face.

It's thrilling.

What is that like when it's spotted?

When someone's like, there it is, there it is.

Is that like a kind of routine or does that make your whole day?

It definitely makes your day.

It's great.

I mean, you know, it's like you're walking around in the middle of summer at night in this beautiful dune forest.

Like that's good enough on its own, but you don't really know when you're going to find the next one.

And you're kind of struggling to get as many callers out as quickly as possible.

So seeding one is awesome.

I mean, that's like, you know, that's true for any wildlife, I think.

Whenever you're hiking and you're like, oh my God, there's a bobcat on the trail.

You're out there by yourself.

And then suddenly you're with a porcupine.

That's amazing.

You're like, our posse just grew by one.

Yeah.

Well, you mentioned summer nights.

Do they tend to hibernate in the winter?

Are they nocturnal?

Why is that a good time?

They don't hibernate.

I mean, summer just for practical reasons.

Like that's when students and I are not in class, but generally they're nocturnal and then they sleep in the day.

But they're out year-round.

They'll congregate in dens in colder areas to keep warm, but they're still out in the middle of winter trying to get food.

What do you think of Teddy the Porcupine?

This is Teddy Bear, your favorite Zooniversity porcupine.

We know Teddy Bear likes corn, but I thought we'd see if Teddy liked

pumpkins today.

What is that, Dad?

What is that?

What is it?

Yeah, Teddy's the best.

I mean, what a great ambassador and such a sweetie.

And of course, we were all like,

when are we going to hear these noises?

I know.

Like, forget the smell.

If I could be out here, like, listening for the smacks and the chomps and everything.

I was so worried you were going to say, Teddy is, and then like a long pause complicated.

And like finding out Teddy was like racist or was like illegally poached or something.

Just a quick side note, Teddy Bear the Porcupine is a rescue critter taken in by Idaho's Earth Fire Institute.

And they say he's a robust, sometimes moody animal who accepts fresh willow branches and spruce logs, but he likes other treats.

And his caretakers note that Teddy was once called Piney until, via an animal communicator, he voiced that he wanted to be called something softer and cuddlier, as he, quote, didn't feel his essence was prickly at all.

And the sanctuary notes that, as most people don't know that porcupines are sweet and gentle, changing Piney's name to Teddy Bear will be a good opportunity for education.

And now, Teddy is famous on the internet.

When Teddy eats a pumpkin, say, and our brains get flooded with serotonin, do most porcupines make that noise if they're munching on something, or is Teddy just particularly like a bon vivant?

Yeah.

He's a real aesthetic.

I think what's happening is those are the noises that a baby porcupine called a porcupet makes when it's nursing.

Porcupet, this one word is the thin string holding up my sanity in 2025.

I think that what's happening is those noises are stimulating milk let down in the mom, which means like they're stimulating the exact chemicals you're talking about, like serotonin and oxytocin.

And so I think what's happening with Teddy is like delayed adult, whatever.

Like he just never lost that function from being a baby to being an adult and he still makes those noises.

But we generally don't hear them in fully grown wild adult porcupines as much as we would like to.

Can I ask you approximately a thousand questions from listeners?

Yeah, let's do it.

Oh my God.

Okay.

Stephanie Rosso wants to know, are there any predators that are undeterred by their quills?

Like, what are porcupine predators?

Curtis Takahashi says it seems like they'd be a very painful prize.

Mouse Paxton, Anastasia Doherty, Jalene Tangan, John Wallace, and Olivia Lester all asked.

Olivia asked, what animals don't care about eating the spines?

And we'll get to the answer of that question in just one moment.

But first let's eject some money into a tender cause.

And this week it's the Native American Fish and Wildlife Society.

And the NAFWS is a national tribal organization seeking to expand the exchange of information and management techniques related to self-determined tribal fish and wildlife management.

Also, Tim told me that one soapbox he'd like to get on is that Congress passed the 1973 Endangered Species Act to appropriate some money to research on species of special concern.

However, Tim told me, federally recognized tribes are not eligible to apply for these funding sources.

They have a separate and much smaller pot of money that's dedicated to tribal management of wildlife, and it amounts to about one-sixth of the money per acre, which sucks.

And Tim wanted you to know about that and also that the Native American Fish and Wildlife Society is a worthy cause.

So thank you to Tim for the heads up and to the NAFWS for their work.

and to everyone who cares about land stewardship and ecology.

And that donation was made possible by our sponsors.

Listen, I love a summer, but I'm a bigger fan of cozy.

My ultimate vibe is being like a toad underground in a hole with cute furniture.

So in the spirit of autumnal nesting, Wayfair has everything you need to cozify your space this fall.

They have recliners, they have warm bedding, they have autumn decor.

You can even get stuff for inside the home that's not furniture.

They have espresso makers.

Did you know they sell appliances?

They also have things for pets.

So if you do have an actual toad that needs tiny things, you can check them out for that as well.

And yeah, I needed a rug for my little office space.

Got myself a cute little fuzzy orange one.

You ever want to hug a rug?

I have.

So, if your space is feeling a little cold, or maybe you're saying, hey, you know what?

Maybe this is the winter where I stop using the big light and I have a couple of nice lamps.

Cozify your space with Wayfair's curated collection of easy, affordable fall updates from comfy recliners to cozy bedding and autumn decor.

Find it all for way less at Wayfair.com.

So that's W-A-Y-F-A-I-R.com.

Wayfair, every style, every home.

Give your floor a scarf.

This podcast brought to you by Squarespace.

Ologies is brought to you by Squarespace.

I procrastinated doing a website for years.

And then right before I launched Ologies, I was like, I better get my shiz together.

And I heard about Squarespace from another podcast.

Did it in one night?

I was like, why did I wait so long?

Whether you're just starting or maybe you're scaling your business, Squarespace, it's an all-in-one website platform designed to help you succeed online.

You can get your domain name.

You can find really great templates that look super polished.

You can review your website traffic.

You can track revenue from like bookings or invoices or product sales all in one place.

And Squarespace also has email campaigns, which are huge.

You can grow your business.

Those are all built in.

So head to squarespace.com slash ologies for a free trial.

And when you're ready to launch, you can use offer code Ologies to save 10% 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain.

Just do it.

You can do it.

I did.

I love it.

Listen, summer is winding down.

This means that chips and dips are no longer lunch.

Well, you can skip expensive takeout and you can skip unhealthy options because HomeChef is like, hello, I'm here.

They deliver fresh ingredients and delicious meals directly to you.

Users of leading meal kits got together and they rated them all and they rated HomeChef number one in quality and convenience, also value and recipe ease and taste.

The numbers have spoken.

So if you prefer like classic meal kits with the pre-portioned ingredients, they got them.

They have quick 30-minute recipes.

They have oven ready options.

You just pop in.

They got microwave meals in case you need something to take to work.

They also have a family menu.

If I need to tweak my habits a little bit, slam dunk, so easy.

Let's say you want to go vegetarian for a while, boom, deliver to your door.

They also have a culinary collection with premium ingredients if you're feeling a little bit fancy.

I love that option.

Now, for a limited time, time, Home Chef is offering my listeners 50% off and free shipping for your first box plus free dessert for life.

So go to home chef.com slash ologies.

That's homeshif.com slash ologies for 50% off your first box and free dessert for life.

Homechef.com slash ologies must be an active subscriber to receive free dessert.

You knew that.

Ologies is brought to you by strawberry.me.

If your career were planned, how's it doing?

Is it neglected?

Is it parched?

Is it overwatered?

What's going on i know you want to keep that alive and career growth is challenging inertia is real but nothing changes unless you change it i love career coaching it has absolutely changed my life i wouldn't have started ologies if it weren't for career coaching and strawberry.me career coaching can help you get out of the career void now strawberry.me they match you with a certified career coach a real human they are not an ai with questionable motives and your career coach listens they They help identify what blocks you have, and then they help you create a plan.

And you can learn how to make small steps for a big change over time.

And they hold you accountable.

So you don't just like think about the thing, you do the thing.

I met with a strawberry.me coach and instantly loved her.

It's never a bad time to brush up on it.

I just started strawberry.me to get over some fears of continuing to expand.

So if you're waiting for the right moment to level up, this is it.

Go to strawberry.ne slash ologies and claim your $50 credit.

credit.

That's strawberry.me slash ologies.

You got this?

We spend so much time looking at screens, which can lead to eye strain.

At Pearl Vision, their trusted eye doctors take the time to understand how your eyes are feeling and what they need.

Eye strain can be managed with expert care from Pearl Vision.

Schedule an eye exam at pearlvision.com.

Get 40% off on a second pair for you or your family.

Some restrictions and exclusions may apply.

See participating stores for details.

Nobody cares for eyes more than Pearl.

Okay, back to that question.

Who dares to eat a porcupine for lunch?

Your dog obviously sucks at it, but some critter must be able to conquer them, right?

It's mostly about avoiding them.

So I don't think there are any animals that are good, at least for North American porcupines, I don't think there are any predators that are good at dealing with the spines.

But mostly we talk about mountain lions and fishers.

Mountain lions, lions, it's like a cultural thing.

So the mom will teach her children how to eat porcupines if they're going to do it.

You have to learn how to do it.

And I think mountain lions will flip the porcupine over and then go at the stomach where there are no quills.

I mean, mountain lions are like meticulous cats, so they'll also scrape off all the quills once the porcupine's dead and consume it.

So kind of like how your mom or your guardian might teach you to peel a banana or cut a pineapple or watch your drink at a bar.

Fishers are a big weasel and they attack the face, which also doesn't have any quills until it's dead, and then they'll eat through the stomach.

There's some cool papers from Wisconsin that suggest that martens, the smaller weasel, will eat baby porcupines by coming up under the snow.

Like they'll tunnel through the snow and somehow hear the porcupine or like see a porcupine and then tunnel under and then come up and get at the stomach that way.

surprise.

And like other stuff, like coyotes, have been shown to learn how to catch porcupines and I think some other species as well, like maybe owls.

So fishers eat the face.

Martins eat babies through snow tunnels.

Mountain lions go for the guts first.

And Tim says that coyotes and bobcats are also able to get a bite of them here and there.

And owls, how are owls even attempting this?

They're like small chickens.

Well, through surprise attacks to the face.

Sometimes it works out well for them, but wildlife rehabbers tell tales of demoralized owls whose failure has to be plucked out of their flesh one by one.

Now, as for the South American porcupines, this 2020 article in the journal Food Webs titled Predation of a Brazilian Porcupine by an ocelot and a mineral lick in the Peruvian Amazon explains that when a patch of salt becomes kind of like a local pub for porcupines, they are vulnerable to the bravest of predators, including the ocelot.

Now, the African porcupines, they got to watch out for hyenas and lions and leopards, but how scary are porcupines?

Like using numbers?

Is it mostly an entry through the face?

I think it's mostly the belly, except for fishers who are just mean like every other weasel.

Yikes.

Olivia Callis, Alexander von Fritzi Bitz, and his mom, Isa Brillard, and eating dog hair for a a living, want to ask, Alexander asks, how many quills do they have?

Is there an average number?

Is it like 4,000 or does it totally vary by species?

I'm sure it varies by species.

I don't know that there are a lot of studies for every species.

For North American porcupines, there's 30,000 quills.

That's the number that everybody uses.

And I have been desperately trying to find, there's two separate papers where people have counted quills on North American porcupines, and they both came up with about 30,000.

Both of them, the introduction reads like somebody's getting punished.

Like

they did something wrong and their advisor was like, just go count quills.

I was going to ask, like, how do you get that?

In terms of average, as far as I know, only two people have ever counted all 30,000.

So

hard to come up with a comparison.

Oh, man.

I think that if you were really feeling like not super social, it would be nice to just be like, I'm just going to dip in the back and just count some quills for a while.

Yeah.

Nobody talked to me.

Everywhere you Google, every old yellowed mammology book you scour, you will find that 30,000 quills quote.

And I kept digging further and further for the true source.

And it led me to a 1972 paper that then quoted E.

R.

Hall's Mammals of Nevada, which is a famed and well-respected 1946 book, which had no cited source, but every other paper I found cited the 1946 book or each other.

I was on this research loop.

It felt like driving in a roundabout.

But finally, I located a more recent 2017 paper in the Journal of Dairy and Veterinary Sciences by a researcher out of the University of Calgary, and it was titled, Getting to the Point: How many quills does a North American porcupine have?

And the methodology section read: The dorsal surface or back was denuded and the quills sorted.

Quills were then counted by the number of sharp pointed ends.

The results?

The author counted 44,006 quills, which, they note, is 46.7% greater than the original claim of 30,000 quills made by E.

R.

Hall in 1946.

Now this information means nothing to you probably, but I needed to find out to get a little bit of closure in my life.

Also, counting up to 44,000 sounds tedious, but it has been done for science.

People wanted to know, when do they get the quills?

Ruby Gordon, Issa Brillard, Olivia Lester, Gretchen Schroeder, Katie Biarty, Cheryl Buetner, Brittany Corrigan, Nicole Kleinman, Sammy, Annalista Young, Alexa Roth, and Jonathan asked, is it painful for a mama porcupine to give birth?

Julia Bingham wanted to know, are they born spiky?

When do their pricks become properly prickly?

Chrysalis said, I pet a baby porcupine once right on his soft little snoot.

Oh my God.

I envy you.

He didn't have sharp quills yet.

So yeah, when do they start to grow those?

And I cannot emphasize enough how cute porcupets are.

It's like, I can't, and photographs do not capture the like,

oh my God, they're so small and like, so cute and just have no idea how painful they could be.

But they are born with quills, but the quills haven't like hardened yet.

So the quills are soft and they're born, I think, headfirst so that, you know, the quills are sort of pointing backwards in North American porcupines.

So they're coming out, not against the grain.

And then within a couple of hours, the quills will harden.

Oh, within a few hours.

Yeah.

And you said they're made of keratin.

Is that kind of like having a soggy fingernail that dries out?

That's a great question.

I'm guessing it's like having a wet fingernail.

Yeah, interesting.

This next one was asked by Charlotte Parkinson, Olivia Callis, Lisa Gorman, Jennifer Lemon Anthony Richards, Caitlin Morrison, Carol, Catherine Vela, Emily Tatero, and Aurora Cullen and Zed Shirigane wanted to know, in Zed's words, do they regrow the spines that they lose during altercations or is it just a one and done deal?

Like, do they shed them and regrow them like we do hair?

Yeah.

Oh, so they just come and go.

Yeah.

Does that mean that you might find porcupine quills just in the leaf litter in the forest?

Yeah, definitely.

I mean, I think that you could.

I think it's the proverbial needle in a haystack trying to find a single quill in the leaf litter.

But if they're fighting, like if the males are fighting or, you know, in some circumstances, the females are more territorial and they will fight over territories, then they will quill each other.

Or if a porcupine falls and a bunch of quills come out, like that's, I think, a more likely scenario where you might just find them in nature where they've come out in sort of a pile rather than just a lone quill.

Mouse Paxton, Chris Curious, Denai Sprouse, and Lisa Vers wanted to know what is the best way to remove quills from a pet.

If they go after a porcupine, Mouse asks.

Dana Sprauss asked, said they suck to yank out of a dog's nose.

So deny, I'm sorry about your dog.

How do vets get them out?

I am not a vet.

I think that they, if there's a lot of them, I think they'll anesthetize them first and then just pull them out.

I was reading that there's, you know, some people talk about cutting them, like clipping them ahead of time to like let air out or pressure out or something.

And I think that might be sort of an old wives tale.

And you got to just kind of go through with pliers and pull them out one by one.

And as soon as possible, otherwise, they'll start migrating into the body and causing real problems.

Okay, so I dip deeper into this topic, and I found an article written by Dr.

Seth Bynum, a veterinarian and also presumably a hunter, as it was published in the magazine Gun Dog.

But he says that as long as the pup is safely restrained, you can use pliers or like a leatherman to grip them one by one at the base of the quill.

And he writes, employ a firm and purposeful grip and pull with the same enthusiasm, but it might hurt a little.

And so go slow and don't get greedy, is his advice, or you risk breaking the quills off if you try to remove them like several at a time.

And when you're removing them, he says put them all in one place or like in a dish of water so they don't roll around or get lost underfoot and then stab you doubly.

Now, if the the victim has a bunch around the eyes or in the mouth, Seth says a vet visit is in order because there are nooks and crannies that quills can burrow into like in the gums or the eye and left undiscovered that can lead to a lot of pain, obviously, and infection.

And the vet also can sedate your poor dog, which if it were me, I'd be like, hell yeah.

Give me that sweet, sweet nectar and render me numb.

I'm out.

Now, this article also did me the favor of busting flim flam in that cutting quills does not make them easier to remove.

It just wastes time while the tissue gets more inflamed and the quills kind of deepen their grip.

And also, while if you love it, Lubit is generally good life advice.

It does not apply to this situation.

As Seth writes that it just results in little more than a slippery dog and tools that can't get their grip.

And yeah, when in doubt, see a vet.

Veterinarians, we love you.

Your work is hard.

You're worth every penny.

If my hairy daughter, Gremy, ever got needle blasted, I would be ubering a medevac.

Emily Krieger, Benjamin, Shantae, first-time question asker, Charlie Eisman, Lindsay Malone, and Issa wanted to know about their personality.

Emily asks, do they have a vibe?

Nervous, irritable, curious, chill?

Shante said, I feel like porcupines always look so chill and calm.

Do the quills mean that most predators leave them alone?

Charlie Eisman says, are they as oblivious as they seem?

Judgmental, but a good question.

What are they like?

Yeah, I mean, I think like every species has sort of a root personality, right?

I mean, and I think it's okay to anthropomorphize in that sense.

Like weasels are different from horses, are different from cows, and porcupines definitely have a type.

They're kind of slow.

They're pretty sweet.

They seem pretty chill.

But then within that, I mean, like every other species, like dogs or cats or humans, like individuals have total personalities, like the angrier ones and the sweeter ones and the dopier ones.

And so there's real variation that you can tell between them.

Tim drew a beautiful comparison that will live with me forever.

One, sorry, I meant to add, like, they're basically sloths, right?

Like sloths are also folivores, which means that they get very little energy from their diet.

And that's why they're so slow.

And the only way to avoid predators for sloths is to like be up in the tree and camouflage as much as possible.

North American porcupines are like just sort of another evolutionary solution to getting food from leaves as your main diet source is like they also are pretty low energy and not super smart, but rather than camouflage, they evolve this incredible defense mechanism.

Porcupines.

Hell raiser sloths forever.

Now, are they well liked in nature?

Are they lonely for other forest companions?

Asked Cinnamon, Wynne Costantini, Issa Brillard, Alexander Kidd, Average Pie, Colin Robotta, Mark D, Annalisa Young, Pablo34, and Emily.

Oh, a bunch of people did ask about social structure.

Ewen Munro wanted to know, are they friends with any other woodland creatures?

And Yasmin Elu said, I saw a porcupine in an aquarium that was almost always curled up in a corner on its stick.

Are they social creatures or was it depressed?

They want to know.

Should I contact the aquarium?

Yasmin asked, but like, are they solitary creatures?

Well, they're nocturnal.

So, I think that's like an issue with zoos in general for porcupines, is they're probably just sleepy.

Imagine it's the middle of the night in your bedroom, and a steady stream of screaming, sticky children are just parading through, being like, I don't know, her energy seems kind of off.

You're like, be gone, off with you.

But porcupines, do they party?

Yeah, it's sort of a mix.

I have not seen them socializing with other forest creatures.

But, you know, I mean, the mom is with her porcupat four plus months and they are, you know, she's teaching them like, here's how you climb a tree and these are the preferred foods that we like to eat.

And then there are certain situations where they will hang out together, whether it's in places like California where they're sharing those willow patches or in places where it's snowy and cold and they'll share a den with each other.

But they seem, I think I would say, generally kind of indifferent to one another if they're not aggressively defending a territory how are they getting these dens because some the eurasian african an expert once told me that they uh they burrow the expert is you and it was like a few minutes ago but

what when the argoreal ones are they able to dig a den or do they find like an old badger haunt or they find like a rock cave i think in most places it's like rock piles or downed trees or like hollow living trees or standing dead hollow trees and so that's a really important part of porcupine ecology is in places in winter where they need a den, like but that could be a really limiting factor for porcupines is not having enough dens or enough shelter.

In California, in this dune system, they were in like these burrows in the dunes.

And it really, we didn't witness it, but it really seemed like they were the ones that were digging out these burrows in the sand and maintaining them themselves.

You know, a few people asked about nutrients.

Verenda Runstadler and Felipe Jimenez wanted to know why they like salt.

Felipe said, I heard that porcupines have a surprising craving for salt and will even gnaw on sweaty tools or clothes to get it.

Does that have a physiological reason or is it just taste?

And Aldous Rose, again, I just keep coming back to him.

His book is so wonderful, but he was talking to a summer camp owner and the summer camp owner was like, why do only the boys' cabins have porcupine damage on them?

Oh Oh my God.

And oldest Rose is like, because boys are peeing on their cabins.

Wow.

They, so

all vertebrates need to maintain a one-to-one ratio of potassium to sodium.

It's like critical.

Like potassium and sodium ions are used in nerve and muscle cell function.

And a lot of herbivores, plants tend to be really high in potassium.

And so herbivores almost universally face this problem of how do you get enough sodium to balance the like huge amounts of potassium that you get through your diet.

So, yeah, porcupines are one of those, and they will seek out salt sodium wherever they can find it.

I watched a video of porcupine legend Aldous Rose in a little shed in the woods that he uses to attract porcupines.

And Rose and like a bunch of other people use salt blocks to attract porcupines so they could catch them.

Oh, that's got to be such a find for a porcupine.

Yeah.

I mean, he, and he was saying, like, you know, it was like a shed outside of his his cabin that he would just put these salt sticks out and porcupines from kilometers around, once they learned about it, would come in to take advantage.

Katie B., Matt Thompson, and Mallory Avery wanted to know about cars.

Mallory says, my dad has a story of a porcupine eating the wires on the underside of his truck when parked in the woods.

But up in the mountains in British Columbia, Kat B says, a lot of the trailheads have chicken wire that you can borrow to wrap around the base of your vehicle.

Maybe they chew your brake lines.

Is this flim flam?

Have you heard of that much?

Yeah, no, it's totally real.

And for rodents in general, like we deal with that with jackrabbits, like they're always chewing on various lines and stuff.

And I'm not totally sure on the chemical composition for the underside of a car in general, but for porcupines, especially the further north you go, you know, cars are going to be covered in salt.

So like we distribute a lot of sodium on the roads, which is a problem for porcupines who are salt-driven in early spring and they result in a lot of roadkills.

But I think that probably also is an attractant.

Like if you're, if you're driving around and you get a bunch of sodium splashed up to the underside of your car, that's probably also attracting them.

If only we had like a whole episode about roadkill.

Look at that.

Boy howdy.

We do.

It's linked in the show notes.

Roadkill Ecology.

It's a banger.

Also, patrons Benjamin, Susan Osborne, Magzarone, and Shuli Rank, first time question asker, asked about their numbers.

Let's talk numbers.

Well, you mentioned that cars can be they're, you know, an ultimate predator for them, essentially on accident, but how are populations doing?

You mentioned that indigenous populations are asking where they went, but overall, what are you finding there?

We don't really know.

And there's just not like a really great funding source to study this at scale.

There's a lot of anecdotal evidence from western North America that they seem to be declining.

There was a graduate student in Montana who set out to do her thesis on porcupines and then couldn't find any.

And so her thesis kind of shifted gears there.

Like there just seems to be a bunch of people everywhere are noticing

there aren't as many porcupines as we used to see.

And in New York, they've gone through a couple of scabies outbreaks, which is really horrible and awful for them and pretty devastating for the populations.

So there are a few theories about porcupine booms and busts.

And Tim says that one researcher, Richard Richard Sweitzert's work, shows that one single mountain lion can really reduce porcupine numbers pretty quickly.

And another factor is a timber industry.

And in the Pacific Northwest and Northern California, there used to be these old-growth Douglas fir redwood stands, but porcupines do not love to eat them.

Now, once the lumber industry mowed down all those older trees, what grew in their place were different plant sources that they loved, like a stoner loves fourth meal.

So their populations exploded.

And in the 1970s, researchers predicted the natural decline from that baby porcupine boom, partly because timber companies could say, look, they're doing fine.

But that was temporary.

Now, speaking of a porcupine menu.

So, okay, they strip the tree, they strip the bark off the trees.

Are they eating it?

Yeah, so in summer, when there's leaves on the trees, they eat the leaves and then like fruit, like apples and stuff like that.

And then in winter, there's no leaves left.

And so they have to scrape the outer bark off and then they consume the inner bark, which is like a terrible nutritional strategy.

They lose like 25% of their body weight.

Tim emailed me after this interview to say he wanted to shout out a couple of researchers, Kara Appel and Parisa Bellamaric, who found that porcupines have more foresight than me and they seem to scout out winter habitat during the summer.

So ahead of times in the dunes where they worked, in the middle of summer, they would go out to their winter homes in the fore dunes to look for the best shelters.

And then they just go back to those places that were most protected from the wind and the rain the following winter.

So they remembered where to go.

Also in terms of like moving to a new town for porcupines, Tim mentioned that oldest Rose hypothesized that they eat each other's poop and they rely on others' gut bacteria to digest the local plants.

So Rose postulates that when a porcupine moves to a new area and gets the runs from eating new kind of leaves, the best way to get the local bacteria is by eating another porcupine's poop.

Tummy's all better.

But yes, porcupine decline is, of course, impacted by human interest.

But by damaging trees, they become pests for timber operators.

And so both like the feds and private timber companies spent the entire 20th century like hunting and killing porcupines all over the place.

So that's another reason why they're declining.

But like the benefit is you get all of these dead and decadent trees and trees that are falling down and trees that are exposed to fungus and stuff that almost surely like contributes to diversity.

Like bugs are getting access to the inner bark.

That's drawing in woodpeckers.

Woodpeckers are then like creating cavities in the trees.

That's providing holes and dens and stuff for other mammals.

And so were timber industries in conjunction with the government putting like a hit, like a price on their heads, kind of like we did wolves?

Yeah, up through the 50s.

I mean, I think Vermont's killed like a hundred thousand porcupines per year you know just in one state every year with a small bounty on their skins and i think or hope that you know this next generation of like ecological foresters are beginning to appreciate the fact that some of these species that damage trees are contributing to overall diversity and maybe there's like a balance between

cutting every tree down and killing every porcupine and like maybe leaving some so that they will help increase the health of the forest.

And, you know, mountain lions are doing fairly well in Northern California and other parts of the Northwest.

Cannabis growing uses a lot of rodenticide because porcupines come, you know, not just porcupines, but rodents in general come and gnaw on their water lines and probably eat their crops.

And so that's, you know, a huge issue for a lot of species now is the

widespread application of rodenticide on both public and private lands, and it goes up the food chain.

Do you think with the cannabis farms, are they just getting cooked?

Are they just so so baked?

Yeah, sure.

Yeah.

I think a lot of animals probably are taking advantage of that.

Yep.

Interesting.

They're like, listen, you be born with quills.

You break your bones falling out of a tree.

I need to, I need to unwind.

It seems really hard for porcupines because I had this student where we put this accelerometer on porcupine and it was like, the accelerometer is not recording anything.

Like it could be sleeping or walking or eating and like the accelerometer is not moving at all.

Like they're so chill to begin with that I can't even imagine what it would be like to be high.

Yeah, rodents can get high from eating the ganja.

Maybe not as high as your roommate who simmered it in ghee, but you know, like not, not high.

Are there populations doing okay, or should we put save the porcupines like on our to-do lists?

That is on the to-do list.

So California, I think, lists it as a species of special concern, which is like the first step step before getting on the endangered species list, which means that it's now eligible for like additional funding.

And that's sort of where we're at is like, there's a bunch of researchers across the Western U.S.

who are noticing this problem and starting to think about, okay, how do we actually count porcupines?

And how do we get enough data longitudinally like through time to see that they really have declined, not just from this sort of elevated baseline that we saw in the 60s and 70s after all these clear cuts, but like truly are disappearing from large parts of their range where they really should be.

There's still lots of places.

There are still lots of porcupines.

It's not like a hair on fire situation, but it's if I had more time and money, that would definitely be a priority would be like just documenting and knowing how they're doing.

I love that if you won Powerball, you'd be like, I'd be out there looking for porcupines.

Yeah, for sure.

Well, actually, I've been thinking about your life and if you don't mind, and you have to have a vase full of quills somewhere.

Like you must have a collection of quills in a jar in a pen holder where are they how many do you have i brought some to put on video so i can show you

um so it's and it's a combination of like you know quills the north american porcupine quills that i've collected and then also people just give me quills right like I found this one or like I'm a friend's a zookeeper and had these extra like African crested porcupine quills.

Here, have some.

We actually ended up with the research we were doing.

My grad students, Kara, Apple, and Persa Bellamarich, organized like giving most of the quills that we got to the tribes that we were working with because like, again, they, you know, they used to go out and get the quills by hand.

And then nowadays they have to mail order them.

So I was like, we got a bunch of extra quills.

Like you guys should have these.

You know, a few people, Daisy Moser, who's up in Alaska, said, I know people up here in Alaska who throw blankets on them to collect the quills for making traditional jewelry.

Daisy says, seems better than the alternative way of getting them, which is, I imagine, getting clubbed in the face with a tail.

But is that traditionally how Indigenous folks are getting them?

And also, a few people, El Wink, wanted to know, as a crafter, porcupine pills are useful as tools and part of craft material.

What's the best legal way to get them?

And Olivia Lester wanted to know, how do humans use them, like for weaponry or tools or writing?

What are the ways that porcupine quills are obtained by humans?

And

what uses have you seen kind of like throughout history?

So obtaining quills in modern times, a person that I talked to in Humboldt who was like, I can't find porcupines on my normal route.

She was like, you know, I just drive around and there were these roads where I would know at night I could go find a porcupine, see a porcupine, park the car, grab my, she used a towel rather than a blanket, you know, thwap the porcupine on the back, take the quills, and then, you know, you got a renewable, sustainable source of quills.

So yeah, towel versus blanket method, I don't know.

And it doesn't hurt them, the porcupine, to eject them.

I think, you know, I think probably

like when you get to the point where you've got full coverage on the body, I'm guessing that not all of the quills got pushed down and released and you are pulling some out.

But I think it's probably a temporary and again, better than, you know, killing them and getting the quills that way.

Yeah, uses, like.

There's documentation of all kinds of things and the quill work for decoration is the most beautiful, I think, and widespread.

And people dyed them like all kinds of incredible colors, like European colonizers would write about.

Like they're using colors that we can't access, like yellows and purples and reds and blacks, and just really incredible weaving of the quills together and into other materials like deer skin, leather, rawhide for decoration on all kinds of clothing and bags and stuff like that.

The bristles on the tail were used for hair combs and brushes.

And then there's a couple of papers that claimed that in sugar maple country, people would modify the quills to tap the maple syrup.

So as a tool for decor for a bunch of uses, I mean, to have that kind of character nice thing is

got to be valuable.

What about flim flam?

What's the most annoying misconception about porcupines?

That they shoot their quills.

That's number one.

Yeah.

So they don't shoot quills.

Yeah.

No, porcupines shoot their quills.

You have to be pretty aggressive to get quilled.

So that settles that.

David Villafranco, Alia Myers, Papka34, Aaron White, Kurt Swanson, Blair C.

Kayla Meyer, Charlotte Short, Tinaz, and first-time question askers Darian Annemily's mom and Don Wright Oliviera, who bravely admitted to spending most of their life, a him, for decades, they say, believing that porcupines shot their quills, Sonic the Hedgehog style.

Hearsay, heresy, horsepucky flim flam.

Now we know.

And then number two, I guess I would say, is the confusion over hedgehogs versus porcupines.

Oh.

Yeah.

So, you know, hedgehogs are not even rodents.

And so it totally evolved independently.

And same physical structure.

They're also keratinized, but yeah, totally different species.

I guess speaking of hardening, keratinize this stuff.

Deny Sprouse, Zuleka Pevik, wanted to know in Denye's words, do they have red teeth?

Do they have that orange teeth?

Like we just did a beaver episode.

Is there enamel that kind of like super hard on one side and then soft on the other?

Yeah, exactly.

And then that creates this sort of chisel shape that they use to scrape bark off And they're continually growing.

And just on the incisors, right?

The front of the big incisors in the front are orange.

Ah, last listener question.

Potato Puffer wanted to know, are their bellies soft?

Sure.

I mean, I guess compared to the dorsal side.

There's no quills on them.

They've got the fur.

Their bellies.

So, yeah.

Okay.

Good.

I had to know.

Last questions I always ask, and I know we've been talking about quills.

We've been talking about leather gloves.

Is getting quilled the worst part of the job or is it like meetings?

Like, are meetings worse than getting quilled?

The worst part of the job, honestly, is I won't give you my bummer answer.

The worst part of the job is- No, give me your bummer answer.

When an animal dies, that's absolutely like the few times I've thought about quitting and doing something else is like, you know, I mean, and not just with porcupines, but animals in general.

Like if you're in the field and something goes wrong and you know that you like contributed to their death, that's pretty much the worst feeling in the world.

The practical answer is like just the funding and trying to find ways to fund research that are, that's in sort of this gray area where it's like, it's hard to find the right funder who wants to pay for the stuff that you want to do and keep it going for a really long time.

You need some sort of directory of Powerball winners.

Yeah, a benefactor.

Yeah, you need a benefactor within the Renaissance.

You need a pet matron of some kind.

I hope someone listens to this and is like, as a billionaire, I've been looking for a pet cause.

And it turns out,

let's save the porcupines.

Yeah.

Teddy's doing a lot of work too for the brand image.

You know, Teddy's getting paid handsomely in pumpkins and stuff like that, though, which is good.

Like as an influencer, he's got like the Lamborghini of jobs.

What about the best?

I have so many.

And like, you know, on the teaching side, I get paid to learn and ask questions about stuff that I'm interested in and then share that information with other people.

And that's awesome.

And then being able to find money to pay early career scientists to go into the field and like spend a summer out in the world studying animals that they're interested in is also like incredible.

Just knowing that

I've had the opportunity to support like you know, spending that much time with focused attention, like learning about some landscape is just an incredible thing that we've set up as a society to make happen.

As the porcupine guy, Tim is just a beacon of knowledge, even for not smart questions.

People text me all the, not all the time, but like, you know, I know a true friend when they're like, I saw a porcupine, here's a photo of it.

Or like, my dog just got quilled.

Like, here's a photo of that.

Those are, you know.

brighten my day when that happens.

The best part of studying porcupines in the wild though was, and it was a total surprise, the scale of the study area was pretty small.

Like you could walk north, south probably three hours and maybe an hour east-west.

Like from the minute that we got out there and started looking for porcupines,

we just started naming things without even talking about it.

It was just like, oh, there's this location that this thing happened.

We're going to call it that.

And there's this really popular like willow stand that a bunch of different porcupines are going to call it this.

And started naming the porcupines.

Like it just felt very...

instinctive, like something that humans have been doing for a million years is like walking around as a group and a team looking for animals and learning about the landscape that we're walking through was just really joyful.

And seeing it, that landscape through the porcupine's eyes and going to places that I would never go before and like thinking about how they were using the landscape was just,

yeah, incredible.

Do they have good eyes, by the way?

I don't think so.

I think it's mostly the nose.

So seeing the landscape through even better than the porcupine's eyes.

Yeah, and not smelling whatever they're smelling.

I hope to one day see one in the wild.

Who knows?

At least I know what to look for.

But thank you so much for letting me get to know porcupines.

And my wish for you is that someone incredibly wealthy listens to this.

Thank you so much.

It's a pleasure.

Thank you so much for your interest in porcupines.

Who doesn't have an interest in porcupines?

Exactly.

Get real.

Thanks, everyone, for your universal love of the best mammal on earth.

So, ask ecological people illogical questions because they are much less prickly than you'd fear.

Thank you so, so much to Dr.

Beam for such a lively discussion of these creatures who are so huggable, at least in our hearts.

Now, you can find out more about Tim's work and the Native American Fish and Wildlife Society at the links in our show notes and on our website, which is also linked in the show notes.

Thank you to everyone supporting and submitting questions at patreon.com/slash ologies, which you can join for one hot dollar.

Ologies Merch is at ologiesmerch.com.

Also, side note, we have a kid-friendly and classroom-safe spin-off show called Smologies, which you can find anywhere you get podcasts.

You can look for the new green artwork by Portland-based muralist Bonnie Dutch.

You can spread the word on Smologies.

We are at Ologies on Instagram at Blue Sky.

I'm at Allie Ward.

Thank you to Erin Talbert for admitting the Ologies podcast Facebook group.

Avelyn Malik makes our professional transcripts.

Kelly R.

Dwyer does his website.

Noelle Dilworth is our lovely scheduling producer whose ceiling collapsed during our recent LA rains.

Not a big deal.

Ellie's doing great.

We're doing great here.

Susan Hale is our managing director who keeps the sky from falling.

Jake Chafey is our capable and very boopable assistant editor.

And Mercedes Maitland of Maitland Audio is our lead editor and a Canadian who is thankfully still friends with us Americans.

Nick Thorburn wrote the theme music and if you stick around to the end of the episode I tell you a secret.

And this week it's that last week I read a review that began Thanks Handsome and I just thought this was a reference to me being like your internet father and also just generally, I guess, dapper and appealing, and it made me feel really good.

But it turns out that Thanks Handsome was actually in reference to the podcast Handsome, which had just shouted out ologies.

So thank you to the handsomes over at Handsome.

I'm embarrassed.

Also, please keep speaking out about our Park Service employees, our federal workers, our scientists, researchers, public servants, all the people who work so passionately and diligently to make the United States I live in and everyone on the globe's present and futures better.

Read the news, call congress people, keep shouting, keep learning, keep telling ologists how much we love them.

Okay, Dad Ward,

over and out.

Till next week, bye-bye.

Pachodermatology, homology, cryptozoology, litology, nanotechnology, meteorology, cold effectology, mapology, seriology,

New fall arrivals are at Nordstrom Rack stores now.

Get ready to save big with up to 60% off Vents, Kurt Geiger London, and more.

How did I not know Rack has Adidas?

There's always something new.

Join the Nordy Club at Nordstrom Rack to unlock exclusive discounts on your favorite brands, shop new arrivals first, and more.

more.

Plus, get an extra 5% off every rack purchase with a Nordstrom credit card.

Great brands, great prices.

That's why you rack.

Are you ready to get spicy?

These Doritos Golden Sriracha aren't that spicy.

Maybe it's time to turn up the heat.

Or turn it down.

It's time for something that's not too spicy.

Try Doritos Golden Sriracha.

Spicy.

But not too spicy.