"BAC" wrote in message
...

"michael adams" wrote in message
...

"Janet Galpin" wrote in message
...

On the topic of hedgehogs, I found I think three dead hedgehogs at
different times and in different parts of the garden last season with
no
obvious signs as to why they had died. I could only think perhaps that
the neighbouring farmer had put down rat poison which the hedgehogs
had
taken in. I don't know whether this can be a significant cause of
hedgehog deaths. Or reading the Wildlife Trust page you suggested I
suppose pesticide is another dismaying possibility.

Janet G

One feature of hedgehogs is that they really are the end of
their own particular food chain. While many of the things they
eat, beetles, caterpillars, earthworms, slugs and snails
are the sorts of things humans are already trying to
poison. Either deliberately or maybe through not being able to
be sufficiently selective. So maybe these hedgehogs in their
turn, came across dead slugs or beetles etc. and rather than
posting their experiences on UseNet as you did, they eat them
instead, with the resulting dire consequences.

While going in the other direction, given that there are no
carrion in the UK - vultures etc. not so far as I know at least -
coupled with the hedgehog's spiny coat, may mean that their
remains may sit around on the surface for a relatively long
time. The website gives them an average lifespan in the wild
of just two years. And so your finds may be unexceptional.
Just that they happened to die there, than somewhere else.
It also suggests that there may have been a growth in
the local population, maybe.

While given that they had no predators at all until the arrival
of the motor car and the use of pesticides, the only limit to their
reproduction - given their ability to hibernate presumably must
have been scarcity of food. So that prior to the arrival of the
motor car and pesticides, there were presumably many more hedgehogs
around than there are today - but correspondingly far fewer slugs
and snails.


Don't think it's valid to assume hedgehogs in the UK had no predators
prior
to the arrival of the car and pesticides (which strictly speaking aren't
predators, although they are causes of death)

Indeed I was thinking of putting it in Inverted commas. Except that

....

Predation -
The action of plundering or pillaging; depredation; rapacious or
exploitative behaviour.

---------------------------------------------------------
Excerpted from Oxford Talking Dictionary
Copyright © 1998 The Learning Company, Inc.
All Rights Reserved.

quote

Its the unconscious exploitative element that makes it even worse IMO.


michael adams

....

because natural predators,
e.g. badgers and foxes have been around far longer than that. Badgers can
and do kill and eat adult hedgehogs, regardless of spines, and foxes are
significant predators of immature hedgehogs, and, according to reports, a
few adult ones. When the fox population of Bristol fell following the
mange
outbreak, the hedgehog population was observed to increase.

IIRC, land's hedgehog 'carrying capacity' was found (by a team led by Dr
Doncaster, Southampton University) to be more or less proportional to its
earthworm population. Just the sort of 'main course' favoured by badgers,
too. I believe the increase in the badger population, which resulted from
its protection, and the increase in urban fox populations have probably
been
detrimental to hedgehog numbers, just as have RTAs, poisonings, drownings
in
cattle grids and steep sided pools, starvation due to hogs getting their
heads caught in carelessly discarded food containers, careless strimming
of
vegetation concealing a hedgehog, the accidental burning of hedgehogs in
bonfires, etc.

It's amazing they have managed to survive at all, given the hazards they
face.