the.com/hedgehog
a self-rolling pincushion that survives snake venom and outlives its own quills
means A small, spiny nocturnal mammal that curls into a prickly ball when threatened and snuffles through gardens and hedgerows hunting insects.
from A plain English compound, exactly what it says: 'hedge' plus 'hog.' The 'hedge' is where the creature lives and forages — those tangled boundary thickets of old farmland — and 'hog' (the same word as for a pig) was pinned on it for its blunt, snuffling, pig-like snout and the grunting noises it makes while rooting about. Both halves are old Germanic words ('hedge' related to words across the Germanic languages for an enclosure), and the pairing has been the animal's name in English since the late Middle Ages, when it replaced the older word 'urchin' — which itself drifted off to mean the spiny sea creature instead.
- venom proof
- shrugs off doses that would kill larger animals
- self-anointing
- foams at mouth, smears spit on its own spines
- spine count
- wears roughly 5,000 quills, shed and regrown
- speed demon
- sprints surprisingly fast on tiny legs
- solo act
- lives alone, meets others mostly to mate
sonic the hedgehog — video game character created by sega in 1991, fastest character in gaming
mrs tiggy winkle — beatrix potter's hedgehog character from 1905 children's book
african pygmy hedgehog — smallest hedgehog species at 5-8 inches long, native to west africa