A research project studying how hedgehogs thrive in urban habitats
Welcome to the Merseyside Urban Hedgehog Project.
European hedgehogs (Erinaceus europaeus) are declining in the UK.
Population numbers seem to recover in city areas (read the report here), but we still know surprisingly little about the life of hedgehogs in cities and suburban habitats.
We want to understand how hedgehogs can survive around us, how urban areas affect them and what they need in their habitat to do well.
Hedgehogs typically hibernate during the cold winter months (November-March) and are only active during the summer. As the hibernation season takes up a major part of their life, we want to know more about their hibernation pattern in cities, in particular, but also look into activity in summer.
Hedgehog breeding activity starts shortly after they come out of hibernation and baby hedgehogs (hoglets) are typically born between June and October (see figure below). Thus, the body condition that they have after hibernation in spring can influence their breeding success and the survival of the hoglets.
Figure: The life of a hedgehog
Later in the year hedgehogs need to prepare for the hibernation season and should fatten up before the winter. During hibernation they typically live on their body fat reserves.
Failure to fatten up can mean that they do not survive the winter. Observations suggest that city hedgehogs may be active in winter or spend less time in hibernation (Gazzard et al. 2020), which could influence their body condition, health and also reproduction.
Click here to read more about hibernation.
What we do: We mark some of the hedgehog’s spines with numbered heat shrink (based on Reeve et al 2019) so that we can identify individuals. To track hedgehog hibernation activity and movement we also use light-weight radio-transmitters that are glued to their spines. The transmitter allows us to locate them (with the help of an antenna and receiver), learn about their activity and to study their hibernation pattern.
Does this hurt them? Hedgehog spines are made from a similar material as our fingernails and they do not have feeling in their spines. Heat shrink and tags fall off as the spines are naturally shed. Spines that may have been clipped when we mount the tag, regrow.
Care & Licence: We also inspect hedgehogs for injuries and parasites, weigh them and take notes about their body condition. If we find hedgehogs that appear to be in bad health we admit them to a hedgehog rescue/veterinarian. Marking and tagging hedgehogs is done under a licence.
Hedgehog care
Report Sightings
If you want to report a hedgehog sighting or are interested to find out whether hedgehogs have been spotted in your area, you can have a look at the Big Hedgehog Map.
Also check out these websites that inform about hedgehogs:
We are a team of researchers from the UK interested to learn more about how animals cope with human-made challenges like urbanisation and climate change.
The project is run by PhD student Katie Crawford and Dr Julia Nowack from Liverpool John Moores University and there are a number of undergraduate students involved in collecting the data.
You can contact us under mail(at)urbanhedgehogs.uk.