Have you ever seen two hedgehogs in a cuddle mood?

One researcher claims to have observed that mated animals “lie in a nest in the warm season;

yes, affectionate hedgehogs are not at all able to part with their beauty and regularly share the bed with her”.

If they didn't have four legs and six thousand spikes, one would have to take them for human beings, because they "lovely play with each other, teasing and chasing each other, in short, cuddling together, as lovers generally do".

If there is no danger from predators, "you can see the two husbands playing their love games and joking around during the day".

At least that's how zoologist Alfred Brehm saw it.

His descriptions are cute, but not tenable.

Kai Spanke

Editor in the Feuilleton.

  • Follow I follow

That is why the publicist Verena Auffermann emphasizes in her book that hedgehogs are real loners.

Incidentally, they also do not roll in fruit, as claimed by Pliny the Elder in his "Naturalis historia", in order to then drag the impaled fruit into hollow trees.

The suspicion noted by Aristotle that the animals would mate standing up has persisted into modern times - although it is not correct.

excluded resurrection

Auffermann has dedicated a separate chapter to the fallacies surrounding the hedgehog.

It says about the naturalist Georges-Louis Leclerc de Buffon: “His detailed descriptions were by no means free from mistakes and errors, which increasingly cast doubt on his knowledge.

For example, Buffon divided the hedgehog species into two groups.”

This admission in turn raises doubts about Auffermann's knowledge, because the hedgehogs are not a species but a family.

Elsewhere we read: "Hedgehogs belong to the large zoological family of mammals and insectivores." In fact, they belong to the order Insectivores and to the class Mammal.

The author postulates the following about hibernation: “Sometimes the heart of a hedgehog only beats 8 to 20 times a minute and not 200 to 250 times as in the warmer months.

It can even happen that the heartbeat in his emaciated body stops completely from October/November to March/April.” If the heart stops working “completely”, the hedgehog is dead – resurrection impossible.

Ambassadors of Higher Wisdom

Since Auffermann equips her protagonist with the abilities of a superhero, her claim that "the hedgehog is the only animal that can eat poisonous snakes without destroying itself" seems only logical.

One would give it this unique selling proposition, but the white stork, eagle owl, badger and European polecat are also capable of it.

The short-toed eagle has his favorite meal in his name.

Although it favors non-poisonous prey, it doesn't stop at adders and asp vipers either.

Overall, the hedgehog imagined by Auffermann - we assume that it is the brown-chested hedgehog that is native to us - creates the impression of being on a philosophical mission.

Literally a fabulous messenger of higher wisdom: “The hedgehog is the hermit among mammals.

He is self-sufficient, lives in a disciplined manner and sticks to his own rules.”

That sounds ideal for any self-help reader who shouldn't be afraid of far-fetched analogies and associations.

According to Auffermann, the fact that the hedgehog can curl up into a spiked ball makes one think of Joris-Karl Huysmans' novel Against the Grain, because it is about withdrawing from society.

In addition, after the terrorist attacks of September 11th, it was shown: "The insecure person sought distance, stayed at home in his apartment, closed curtains and doors, hedged himself in."

And today?

Rages the coronavirus that 'looks like a spiked bullet'

The social distance demanded everywhere is a big problem, because what "the hedgehog naturally masters is torture for humans".

That's how it goes in this book, from the reading of which one can only warn anyone who has a thing for hedgehogs.

Verena Auffermann: "Hedgehog".

A portrait.

Matthes & Seitz Verlag, Berlin 2021. 127 p., ill., hardcover, €20.