Rescued Porcupine Snacks with Contentment After Transformation at Maine Wildlife Center
A sweet porcupine recovering in a wildlife sanctuary in Maine looks much better after a few months of treatment for a fungal disease sweeping through his species in New England. Archer the porcupine was brought into the facility back in February, after a resident noticed the local animal appeared to have something very wrong with him. A rescuer drove out to the location, hoping they could locate the porcupine, and indeed, his condition was so bad that he hadn’t moved much. He’d lost nearly all the fur on his head and shoulders, which was covered with a thick scaly growth. He also had an open wound on his head.
Now, though? You’d never know it.
Archer is only one of many porcupine victims that has fallen ill due to a fungal ringworm infection sweeping through the species all over New England. Though in humans, ringworm causes little more than an annoying rash, the same fungus is proving fatal to porcupines.
Related: Porcupine’s Sounds When Begging Will Make Anyone Want To Give Him All the Snacks
In the spiny rodents, the fungus causes a condition known as hyperkeratosis, which makes them to grow layer after layer of scaly skin, impeding their mobility and eventually making it impossible for them to walk, climb trees, or forage. Without treatment, they may starve to death.
Fungal Infections in Wildlife
Luckily for Archer and other porcupines that make it into a wildlife sanctuary, vets are able to easily treat the infection with the same anti-fungal treatments used on ringworm in humans.
Fungal infections can be the hardest to treat (as anyone who has watched the fungus-zombie television show The Last of Us knows), and other fungal infections have decimated wildlife populations, such as the white nose fungus in bats and the chrytid fungus which has extinguished nearly one hundred different species of frogs.
It’s impossible to know what the actual effect of this illness is on porcupines in New England, though, because no one is really counting them.
Porcupine Population and Behavior
According to The New Hampshire Union Leader, porcupines are common enough that no wildlife organization is tracking them as an endangered species, and the fish and game departments aren’t keeping records either, because it’s an uncommon animal to hunt. However, if you see a porcupine with this sort of growth or injury on its body, it’s worth it to report to local wildlife services for possible entrapment and treatment.
Indeed, it’s possible that this porcupine was only seen because its illness led it to be outside during the daytime.
Porcupines are nocturnal, solitary vegetarians who live in conifer and deciduous forests throughout the northeastern United States and all through Canada into the Yukon. Their diet mainly consists of grass and other greenery, nuts, berries and fruit in the summer. During the winter, however, they eat twigs and buds of woody plants.
As for Archer, he will continue his recovery in the Saco River Wildlife Rehabilitation Center in Limington, Maine, northwest of Portland. Veternarians there determined his sex and young age, and are treating him with medicated dips as well as oral medications. There, he’s receiving excellent medical care, as well as developing a taste for apples, broccoli, and sweet potatoes.
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