Porcupine’s Adorable Zoomies Are Making Everybody Smile
There's really nothing cuter than when animals get the zoomies, but have you ever seen a porcupine with a case of the zoomies? Cobb's Exotic Animal Rescue shared a video at the beginning of March showing an all-white porcupine running wildly and burning some energy...and it's adorable!
The video is about 30 seconds long, and I wish it was longer. It starts with the white porcupine zooming along crazily in its enclosure. Next we see a black and white porcupine crawling up the man who was recording the video's leg - it wants to see what is going on next door and maybe even join in!
What a cute video of this porcupine playing! It made me smile - I just wish that there was more of it! Viewers were also big fans of Cobb's adorable porcupine. @Jennifer Dhue had my favorite comment, "Flurry runs like a windup toy LOL!"
Related: Sweet Porcupine Who Loves 'Getting Pets' Is Simply Irresistible
Facts About Porcupines
@lesliemiles323 shared, "An albino porcupine!!!...so beautiful!" I didn't even know albino porcupines existed, so I decided to do some research to learn more about them since they are so unique. So unique that Ecosystem Science Professor Ken Otter says, "the probability for a mammal-like porcupine developing albinism is extremely low, ranging from one in 20,000 to one in a million." So there's definitely not many of them around!
Other than being completely white, albino porcupines are like all other porcupines. What does porcupine mean? According to Treehugger the word can, "be traced back about 600 years, when the animal was known as "porke despyne." That came from the Old French porc espin, which literally translates to "spine hog," from the Latin roots porcus (pig) and spina (thorn or spine)." The name 'spine hog' makes sense, although a porcupine has nothing to do with pigs. It's actually a large rodent.
Believe it or not, some species of porcupines are really good swimmers! They have air-filled quills on their backs that help keep them afloat and work like a "permanent life jacket." They then swim through the water, very much like dog paddling.
Speaking of quills, porcupines can have up to 30 thousand of them! Many people think that porcupines can launch their quills like arrows, but they cannot. If they feel threatened or attacked, the quills rise and if a predator or threat gets close enough to them, each quill has a barb like a fishhook on its end that are very hard to remove. Some porcupines quills will rattle if shaken, providing predators with a warning before getting poked.
But my favorite porcupine fact has to do with the babies. Baby porcupines are called porcupettes...how adorable is that?! Porcupettes are born with soft, bendable quills, and within just a few days that start to harden. These guys are very independent, and sometimes are ready to leave mom after just a few months. Pretty cool!
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