What does a hedgehog eat in nature and in captivity?

2024 Author: Henry Conors | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-02-12 02:40

Hedgehog is the most common animal on the planet, especially in Russia. It happens that even an ordinary city dweller can see this creature without going out into nature, because sometimes a hedgehog can be found even in the city. And how can you get past this funny animal? I want to take him home with me so that he pleases with his cute look every day.

Tearing an animal away from nature is not exactly a good thing, but if it comes to that, you need to create all the conditions for keeping your new pet. First of all, you need to know what the hedgehog eats. You won't be able to fully provide him with the diet that he adhered to in nature, but you can try to get closer to it.

What does a hedgehog eat?

If you analyze the classification of hedgehogs, you can immediately see that they belong to the order Insectivores. From here we draw a logical conclusion: their main food is various kinds of insects, and not fruits and mushrooms, as children's fairy tales tell us about. The list of what the hedgehog eats also includes small rodents and frogs, worms, mollusks, lizards. Sometimes they get more hard-to-find food for themselves, for example, bird eggs, even the chicks themselves. The surprising fact is that hedgehogs eat snakes.

This is a very cute, but impudent creature. What other animal is capable of ruining a hornet's nest without harming itself and eating all the striped inhabitants that are there?! Hedgehogs do not care about any, even the strongest poisons, so they calmly eat snakes, bumblebees, bees and wasps. Such immunity of hedgehogs is considered an amazing feature of this animal, but zoologists have not yet found out what their secret lies in. Imagine what a medical breakthrough it would be if thanks to hedgehogs we could find a universal antidote!

Keeping a hedgehog in captivity

What hedgehogs eat in nature, and what you can feed them are completely different things. After all, where do you find a bird's nest that your pet would love to destroy by eating raw eggs? Of course, based on this, hedgehogs can be fed chicken eggs quite successfully. Worms, larvae and other insects that these animals eat can be easily found in any pet store. In addition, your hedgehog will not refuse minced meat either.

Everyone has heard about hedgehogs' favorite delicacy - milk. Do not forget about this fact, pamper your pets! Another delicious nectar for hedgehogs is honey. In addition, it can act as a medicine for your pet's immunity. If you sum up the weight of all the food that the hedgehog eats per day, you get about 200 grams of a variety of food.

Hibernation feeding

These little creatures eat a disproportionate amount. On average, their daily norm is at least 60 May beetles. So feed wellyour pet, it is especially important to feed him abundantly before wintering. Hedgehogs hibernate at this time of the year, so in order to survive the winter, the animal needs to gain considerable weight - at least 700 grams.

Be sure to let your pet hedgehog hibernate, otherwise the animal will get tired of constant winter activity and soon die. Therefore, provide him with all the conditions for hibernation:

• hedgehog weight must be more than 700 grams;
• temperature - from 0°С to 5°С;
• put a lot of dry moss and leaves in the cage.

In general, answering the question of what the hedgehog eats, we can say that he, like a man, is omnivorous, especially having such a feature as resistance to poisons.