Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean

Summary

Podcast Summary: Ologies with Alie Ward – "Erethizonology (Porcupines)" Featuring Dr. Tim Bean

Episode Overview In the February 19, 2025 episode of Ologies with Alie Ward, host Alie Ward dives deep into the fascinating world of porcupines, a topic brought to life by Dr. Tim Bean, an associate professor from California Polytechnic State University (Cal Poly). With an extensive background in ecology, evolution, and environmental biology, Dr. Bean shares his extensive knowledge and passion for these spiny rodents, shedding light on their unique behaviors, anatomy, and the conservation challenges they face.

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Introduction to Porcupines

Alie Ward kicks off the episode by introducing Dr. Tim Bean, highlighting his academic journey from Columbia University to UC Berkeley, and his specialization in rodent studies.

Alie Ward [01:12]: "Porcupines are rodents. What?"

Dr. Tim Bean [06:19]: "North American porcupine quills have backwards facing barbs. The quill itself is sharp, it gets in you, and then there are these backward facing barbs that make it very difficult and painful to pull back out."

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Porcupine Anatomy and Behavior

Dr. Bean provides an in-depth look at porcupine anatomy, particularly focusing on their quills and noses.

• Quills: Porcupine quills are modified hairs made of keratin, equipped with backward-facing barbs that deter predators. Dr. Bean explains the structural differences between North American and African/Eurasian porcupines, noting that North American species have more evolved, barbed quills, making them particularly formidable.

• Nose: Porcupines possess highly developed noses essential for their folivorous diet. Their large, sensitive snouts help them locate the best leaves and detect other porcupines nearby.

Notable Quote: Dr. Tim Bean [05:56]: "They need to be able to smell really well. They have a really good sense of smell."

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Ecology and Habitat

The discussion transitions to porcupine ecology, highlighting the differences between ground-dwelling and arboreal species.

• Habitat Preferences: African and Eurasian porcupines are largely ground-dwelling with longer quills, while North and South American porcupines are more arboreal, spending significant time in trees and having shorter quills.

• Locomotion Challenges: Arboreal porcupines face the risk of falling from trees, which can lead to quill injuries and broken bones. Dr. Bean references Aldous Rose's research, noting that a significant percentage of porcupine skeletons show signs of falls.

Notable Quote: Dr. Tim Bean [12:14]: "Porcupines have this special mechanism where they're not just going to come out day to day. You actually have to push into the skin."

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Reproductive Behavior

A significant portion of the episode delves into the reproductive habits of porcupines.

• Pregnancy and Lactation: Female porcupines experience lengthy periods of pregnancy and lactation, totaling approximately eleven months each year.

• Estrus and Mating Rituals: Dr. Bean explains the intricate mating rituals, including pheromone signaling and the competitive behaviors of males vying for access to females.

Notable Quote: Dr. Tim Bean [22:08]: "For their body size, one of the longest pregnancy periods of any mammal. So they're pregnant for about seven months and then lactating for four months."

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Predation and Defense Mechanisms

The discussion moves to natural predators of porcupines and their defensive strategies.

• Primary Predators: Mountain lions, fishers, coyotes, martens, and owls are among the primary predators capable of overcoming porcupine defenses by targeting unprotected areas like the belly or face.

• Defense Mechanism: Porcupines rely on their quills for defense rather than fleeing, making encounters with predators often painful and strategically challenging.

Notable Quote: Dr. Tim Bean [39:40]: "It's mostly about avoiding them. So I don't think there are any animals that are good, at least for North American porcupines."

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Conservation Concerns

Dr. Bean raises important conservation issues, emphasizing the declining populations of porcupines in various regions due to habitat loss, hunting, and rodenticide use.

• Population Declines: Evidence from multiple studies indicates a reduction in porcupine numbers across western North America, attributed to factors like habitat destruction and increased predation pressures.

• Endangered Species Act: While the 1973 Endangered Species Act aimed to protect species like porcupines, Dr. Bean points out the inadequate funding for federally recognized tribes, limiting effective conservation efforts.

Notable Quote: Dr. Tim Bean [63:19]: "If I had more time and money, that would definitely be a priority. Would be, like, just documenting and knowing how they're doing."

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Human-Porcupine Interactions

The episode explores the various ways humans interact with porcupines, from traditional uses of quills to modern challenges like porcupine-related vehicle damage.

• Traditional Uses: Indigenous communities have historically utilized porcupine quills for decorative purposes, creating jewelry and clothing accessories.

• Modern Challenges: Porcupines have been known to damage vehicles by chewing on wires, leading to increased roadkill incidents and economic losses for cannabis farms and other agricultural operations.

Notable Quote: Dr. Tim Bean [56:29]: "It's totally real. And for rodents in general, like, we deal with that with jackrabbits..."

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Audience Q&A

The latter half of the episode is dedicated to answering listener-submitted questions, covering topics such as:

• Predators: Clarifying which animals can and cannot effectively prey on porcupines.

• Quill Characteristics: Discussing the number of quills, their growth patterns, and how porcupines regenerate lost quills.

• Behavioral Traits: Exploring porcupines' social structures, temperament, and whether they are solitary or social creatures.

• Conservation Efforts: Addressing population dynamics and the need for increased conservation funding and initiatives.

Notable Quotes: Dr. Tim Bean [68:17]: "That settles that. And then number two, I guess I would say is the confusion over hedgehogs versus porcupines."

Alie Ward [75:34]: "Keep learning. Keep telling ologists how much we love them."

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Conclusion and Call to Action

Alie Ward wraps up the episode by emphasizing the importance of supporting conservation efforts and staying informed about porcupine populations. She encourages listeners to engage with the podcast’s other resources, such as supporting the Native American Fish and Wildlife Society and participating in related Ologies content.

Alie Ward [73:13]: "Thank you so much to Dr. Bean for such a lively discussion of these creatures who are so huggable, at least in our hearts."

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Further Information Listeners interested in learning more about Dr. Tim Bean’s work or supporting porcupine conservation can find additional resources and links in the show notes on the Ologies website.

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This episode of Ologies with Alie Ward offers a comprehensive and engaging exploration of porcupines, shedding light on their complex biology, ecological roles, and the pressing conservation issues they face. Dr. Tim Bean’s expertise provides valuable insights, making this episode a must-listen for anyone curious about these remarkable rodents.

Transcript

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[Alie Ward]

Oh hey, it's yesterday's medication in your jeans pocket. Oops. Alie Ward let's stab ourselves with information from a porcupine's business end. We have a good one. What a chat. I remember getting off this interview and being like, this is. This is why I make the show. You're in for a treat. Okay, so we've got an associate professor from San Luis Obispo's California Polytechnic State University Cal Poly, who teaches courses like Introduction to Wildlife Conservation and Administration. They studied ecology, Evolution and Environmental Biology at Columbia university, headed to UC Berkeley for a master's and PhD in environmental science, policy and Management. Bonus, they specialize in rodents. What does that have to do with porcupines? Everything. Porcupines are rodents. What?

[Listener/Co-host]

Yep.

[Alie Ward]

Big, beautiful barbed rat like creatures. And we love them. Thank you also to Sarah Listener Berman to listener Sarah Berman who suggested this ologist singing their praises of their porcupine enthusiasm. So we're going to get to it in a sec. But first, thank you so much to everyone who sends in questions audio ones as well. You can submit them at patreon.com ologies thanks to everyone wearing ologies merch from ologiesmerch.com and thanks to everyone who leaves reviews for the show which helps us so much. Like this one from njroadrunner who wrote if science could embody itself as a warm hug, this show would be it. Also want to shout out Snakes Rule who left the review. I'm 11 years old and I love this podcast. No, I'm not kidding. No, I do not listen to smallogies. No, I do not listen to the bleeped ones. Yes, and I actually understand it. You keep doing you ally Snakes Rule. I'm a fan of you and of snakes. Okay, for those who are looking though, for kid Safe episodes, just a reminder that we have smallogies. It's available wherever you subscribe to podcasts. It's a spinoff show. You can look for the green cover art. Okay Porcupines. So porcupines, news to me, get their name from the Latin for thorn pig. But the ology for this, let's just say erythrozenology, which comes from the Greek for irritating. There's two major groups of porcupines. We're going to include both in this episode, but mostly we're focusing on the genus Erythrozon.

[Listener/Co-host]

Is that cool?

[Alie Ward]

Okay, great. So get suited up for a thrilling array of weird stories involving barbs, grunts, squeaks, cartoonish noses, romantic gestures that will leave you wanting to bleach your brain. Counting quills, male models flim flam about quill removal, how to spot a porcupine in the wild, and so much more with professor ecologist and erythrozenologist Dr. Tim Bean.

[Dr. Tim Bean]

Tim Bean, he him.

[Listener/Co-host]

Do you get called Jim Bean a lot?

[Dr. Tim Bean]

Jim Beam, Yeah. And then sometimes like Kim for some reason for to go orders confusing.

[Listener/Co-host]

Tim Kim, Jim Beam, yeah.

[Dr. Tim Bean]

As long as it's not Mr. Bean, I'm fine.

[Listener/Co-host]

Do people ever call you Dr. Porcupine?

[Dr. Tim Bean]

No.

[Listener/Co-host]

That's a really good Marvel character. Just like shooting quills out of your wrists at people.

[Dr. Tim Bean]

Yeah, well, we'll get to that, right? Like what?

[Listener/Co-host]

Yeah, okay. Actually, porcupines, I feel like underneath their quills they gotta be the cuddliest little babies.

[Dr. Tim Bean]

Yeah. I think that's what makes them so compelling is like they are dopey and lovable and sweet and almost apologetic about the fact that they're unhuggable.

[Listener/Co-host]

If you wanted to be in some sort of close relationship with them, I feel like they would have avoidant attachment issues.

[Dr. Tim Bean]

When I started this research there I was like, literally to the point where I was googling. How do you pick up a porcupine? And there is. There's a self help book called how to hug a Porcupine. Easy ways to love the difficult people in your life.

[Listener/Co-host]

So is there an easy way to handle a porcupine? If you're a porcupine researcher, what kind of gloves are you working with?

[Dr. Tim Bean]

Yeah, welding gloves. Like thick, heavy leather gloves. Gloves is generally the recommendation. There's a spot under their tail that doesn't have any quills and their tail is super strong. It's almost like a fifth appendage that they use to help climb. And so that's generally how people try to pick them up is like get your hand under the tail and grab them there and then you can kind of pick them up. But at that point, like, you got to anesthetize them. If you're really going to handle them and measure them and put a collar.

[Listener/Co-host]

On and all that stuff by under the tail. Is that their junk necessarily or is that in a different spot?

[Dr. Tim Bean]

No, their junk is hidden away most of the time too. So it's actually like retracted into the body, which makes it easier to climb. Right. Like they're right up against the tree when they're climbing.

[Alie Ward]

Must I remind us of the 2024 Paris Polter whose victory was thwarted by his own generous nethers? A self betrayal of Olympic proportions. But Tim says that a porcupine's tail, which is about the size of a mitten, is covered in quills on the top. But on the flip side, it's just a haven of only guard hairs. And in the colder months, some soft fuzzy fur.

[Listener/Co-host]

Are quills types of hairs or are they modified scales? I mean, I'm going to get right into it because I'm like, I what the fuck is going on?

[Dr. Tim Bean]

Yeah, they are, they're modified hairs, so they're made of keratin. And you sort of look at the evolutionary lineage of porcupines and there's like these species called spiny rats that have spines that are closely related. And then you can kind of see like other porcupines have less evolved quills. And then you've got the North American porcupines that have these really highly modified quills that are really awful if you.

[Listener/Co-host]

Get them in you really, what are they like?

[Dr. Tim Bean]

So North American porcupine quills have backwards facing barbs. The quill itself is sharp, it gets in you and then there are these backward facing barbs that make it very difficult and painful to pull back out. And then they also the backward facing barb means that if you don't pull it out, the quill will start to work its way into you further and further or your dog. And then that becomes a real problem if it actually gets in your body and you got to go in and get it out.

[Alie Ward]

So at the very tip of an Erythizontidae or North American Porcupine's quills are hundreds upon hundreds of tiny barbs. And for more on those if you must, you can see the 2012 paper Microstructured Barbs on the North American porcupine quill enable easy tissue penetration and difficult removal. There you go. Now the genus Hystrix or African porcupines, sometimes called Old World porcupines. No barbs. In case you have a choice of which type of porcupine can shank you. Oof.

[Listener/Co-host]

Okay, you've mentioned other porcupines and you mentioned North American porcupines. I know you study North American ones, but are there Eurasian porcupines? Are there South American porcupines? Are there African porcupines?

[Dr. Tim Bean]

Yeah, all of those. And it's really confusing. So there's two families, capital F of porcupines. There's the Histricidae, which are the African Eurasian porcupines. And there's like 11 species of those. And then totally separately is the family of north and South American porcupines, Erythiazontidae, where there's about 20 species of those. And it's. Man, I've been looking the past week or two because I always tell people that those two families, the African and Eurasian porcupines and the north and South Americans evolved separately and that they evolved quills independently from each other. And nobody seems to want to really go on record and say whether that's true or not or whether the. So they separated 10 to 20 million years ago. And I think we just don't really know whether that ancient rodent ancestor of the two groups had some form of quill. And then they split and they continue to have quills or if they evolved independently. But yeah, so around the world there's like 30 species of porcupines, but they're very different. The family of African and Eurasian porcupines are much bigger. They're ground dwelling. The quills are way longer. They're like a foot long. And I think they're more aggressive. Like a lot of the videos of, you know, porcupine, like attacking a leopard. Those are generally African porcupines, Eurasian porcupines, and then the north and South American porcupines are more arboreal. They spend a lot of time in trees eating leaves, much shorter quills.

[Alie Ward]

So we got about 30 species of porcupine and the African and North American ones are distantly related. And then we got the South American ones with a big bulbous pink nose and a tail like a monkey. African porcupines can weigh up to 66 pounds or 30 kilos. And they're mostly veggie eaters who dig for roots and bulbs and they eat people's tuber crops or they forage for fruits or bark. Sometimes an African porcupine will eat a dead body if it finds one like Rotkill. And sometimes they hoard a bunch of bones to chew on in their den if they need minerals. What's more, goth, thousands of spikes striking fear into the hearts of your foes and gnawing on bones in your underground cave. Not even bats can compete with that. I Did not know they went so hard. I didn't know there were so many branches of porcupine.

[Listener/Co-host]

Speaking of branches, do you think that the adaptations needed to be a ground dweller versus a tree dweller are different in terms of if you're in the ground, more things are going to come and try and eat you, but if you're in the trees, you're going to encounter fewer jackals and stuff.

[Dr. Tim Bean]

Yeah, that's possible. That definitely is possible. Right. Like, the defense stuff is much more important if you're on the ground and you're out, you know, digging around for roots and stuff. The other part of it is, at least for North American porcupines, they fall out of trees a lot, so they're not super coordinated and they'll quill themselves. And so. Yeah. And so I think there's probably some benefit to having shorter quills in that case. Like, instead of breaking a bunch off when you fall on the ground, like, having shorter ones that are at least somewhat protected by the outer guard hairs is probably better.

[Listener/Co-host]

Oh, that's so embarrassing.

[Dr. Tim Bean]

It's sad. I mean, so there's this incredible book by Aldous Rose, U L D I S R O Z E called the North American Porcupine. He's a professor in New York City, and he talks about, like, he examined porcupine skeletons in museums, and he was saying, like, a third of them have broken bones, which has got to be from falling out of trees.

[Listener/Co-host]

Oh, my poor baby. Do they have, like, hollow bird bones or. They're just not that good at balance.

[Dr. Tim Bean]

They're just not that good at balance.

[Alie Ward]

Imagine wearing a headpiece that is like a fan made of barbed spears. And it is your burden in life to bear just trying to slink between branches to try to eat a salad made out of trees. You're, like, weaving through an agility course dressed like Rihanna at the Met Gala. But if diamonds were needles, the, like.

[Dr. Tim Bean]

Best morsels are probably out at the end of the branches. And so I think they're probably taking some risks going out on some thin limbs that they probably. It shouldn't be.

[Listener/Co-host]

I'm never complaining again, ever. When the quills come out in a predator, I always wonder, do they just kind of pop out easily like a Lego snapping off? Or is it, like, painful, like getting. Getting your mustache waxed?

[Dr. Tim Bean]

For the porcupine, they have this special mechanism where, like, they're not just going to come out day to day. You actually have to push into the skin. So, like, something pushes on the top of the quill. And then that like, release the muscle that's holding it in and then they come out. Oh, so it is sort of like waxing your, your mustache or legs or whatever. If you just pull the quill out, that would probably be super painful. But if they take their tail and like thwack a dog's face that like engages this release mechanism that I think.

[Alie Ward]

Probably does not hurt the porcupines, at least the dog would like to have a word. Oh God.

[Listener/Co-host]

How did you get into porcupines of all things? I know that you work on a few different animals, kangaroo rats, but how did your path lead you down this spiny road?

[Dr. Tim Bean]

Yeah, so the practical answer is when I was applying for my first faculty job at Humboldt State, everybody's asking me like, what are you going to study when you get up here? And I'm giving all these like lame half assed answers because I just don't ever want to think about research again. And then finally, the final night, second night, we go out to dinner with like all the other faculty in the department and they ask again, like, what are you going to study if you get up here? And I just, it popped into my head, I had seen this talk a couple years ago by this guy Rick Schweitzer, who does a lot of conservation work in the Sierras and had done his graduate work on porcupines in Nevada. And he was saying, we don't see porcupines anymore. They're not where they used to be in the Sierras. And so I just blurted out like, I don't know, maybe porcupines. And that clicked. Like everyone around the table was like, oh, that's such a great idea. Like porcupines would be amazing. The students could go out, they can do these behavioral observations. It's such a cool species. And all the tribes in the area, like the Hupa and the Yurok and the Karuk have all been asking like, where are the porcupines? We used to have porcupines here and we can't find them anymore. So that was sort of, I don't know if it got me the job, but it was just sort of this like light bulb moment. And so yeah, started research up there when I got the job.

[Listener/Co-host]

Do you think that there was something in you that made you say it? Because everyone knows that porcupines are cool.

[Dr. Tim Bean]

Yeah, I mean, yeah, they are. They're super cool. And they're sort of, they're kind of like, you know, we talk about like a comics comic or a writer's writer. Like I think Porcupines are kind of, I think, the species that a lot of ecologists really like, but they're sort of underappreciated and understudied. You know, everybody loves porcupines, and also.

[Listener/Co-host]

The thrill of the unapproachability of them.

[Dr. Tim Bean]

Yeah.

[Alie Ward]

So porcupines are your favorite ecologist's favorite ecology. And I have seen many photos and videos of porcupines willingly because they live in my heart. And some of them have faces like a Japanese cartoon with a tiny nose that's sometimes brown and fuzzy. They got little teensy fidgeting hands. Other porcupines have a nose that looks like an oversized pink marshmallow.

[Listener/Co-host]

What's going on with their nose? Why so big and cute?

[Dr. Tim Bean]

So they need to be able to smell really well. And some of the noses of, like, porcupine accounts on social media. I think some of those are South American species where they have this, like, big bald nose that's kind of sticking out. North American porcupines also have really big noses, but they're furred. But they just need to have a really good sense of smell. I mean, they're folivores. Most of what they eat is leaves, and so they need to be able to smell where the good leaves are and where the other porcupines are. So, yeah, highly evolved nose for scent.

[Listener/Co-host]

Is it soft? It looks like a big pencil eraser that. I want to touch it.

[Dr. Tim Bean]

That's exactly what it feels like.

[Listener/Co-host]

Really?

[Dr. Tim Bean]

Yeah.

[Alie Ward]

Want to touch it? I want to touch the marshmallow.

[Listener/Co-host]

Nosy. What in your job necessitates getting to common word?

[Dr. Tim Bean]

Boop.

[Listener/Co-host]

But get to touch the nose of a porcupine? Like, are they anesthetized and you have to make sure their nose is a certain temperature, or is it purely just a perk of the job?

[Dr. Tim Bean]

Yeah, the second one. So a lot of the research we were doing was, like, studying their ecology in this coastal dune forest in Northern California. And the best way to do that is to track them. So we would catch them, anesthetize them, and get a radio collar on them and kind of, you know, just measure them for sex and reproductive status and weight and ectoparasites and stuff like that. And while they're sleeping, you know, you get to look at them and feel their nose and see what the bottom of their feet look like and stuff like that.

[Listener/Co-host]

How big we talking? When it comes to porcupines in general.

[Dr. Tim Bean]

North American porcupines are, like. It's really variable. It's interesting. Like, northeastern, like New England porcupines I think, are a little bit smaller. Alaskan porcupines can get up to about 20 or 30 pounds.

[Alie Ward]

20 to 30 pounds is like the size of a corgi, but a corgi that's been bred with a sea urchin, they're pretty big.

[Dr. Tim Bean]

I mean, it's like the ones that we have in Northern California. Like, it definitely takes two arms to. To lift a large adult porcupine.

[Listener/Co-host]

And two gloved arms.

[Dr. Tim Bean]

Yeah. And, you know, fleece and jacket and anything else that you can use to protect yourself.

[Listener/Co-host]

How many times do you think you've been barbed?

[Dr. Tim Bean]

Not that many. So it turns out dogs are just really stupid. Like, it's really hard to get quelled, especially when they're anesthetized. Like, like I said, you do have to, like, push it in to engage the release. And so when you're handling them and turning them over to examine the underside and stuff, like, you'll definitely get quills that kind of just come out and stick in your shirt. But to get truly quilled, it happened a few times to my students. I never got, like, one really deeply embedded in my skin.

[Alie Ward]

I did watch one YouTube video of Aldous Rose, another porcupine legend, and his capture method is to cover them with an old red igloo beer cooler, which slides shut, and then from there, he can sedate them and then take them out and take measurements for, like, 20 or so minutes, and then release them on their merry way. Now, what if you get porcupined and you are a porcupine? They have little paws that are good at grasping, and they just gotta do their best to reach the ones embedded by their enemies. It's a risky life, but they are armed.

[Listener/Co-host]

What kind of students do you have that are drawn to this field?

[Dr. Tim Bean]

All kinds. That's a really interesting question. I think the stereotype of wildlife ecologists is generally people who would rather be around animals than other people. And so I guess that goes sort of doubly for people who want to be around a quilled animal. But, yeah, it's a mix of undergraduates and master's students, and they've all been just incredible. I mean, so excited to work with the species and so curious. And the porcupines we were studying just seemed to elicit this really incredible curiosity about the species and the place they were living. I would go and visit and go up during the summers when we were doing the research, and they would be back at the field house, and they would just not stop talking about porcupines. They're making dinner let's talk about this porcupine we saw today after dinner. Let's think about this other thing that we haven't talked about. I was. You guys need to take a break from thinking about porcupines.

[Listener/Co-host]

I can't stop. Do you know that I just realized right now that a porcupine actually inspired this entire podcast to exist, and I have not thought about it until right now?

[Dr. Tim Bean]

Is that true?

[Listener/Co-host]

Yes. There was a guest named Phil Torres who's amazing, and he's on now. He's on Expedition Unknown on Discovery, but he studied butterflies in the jungle. But he was a friend before I started this podcast, and he once told this story about how he was studying butterflies in the jungles of Peru. And he's also hunky to the point where it's comical. And he's married to, like, a absolutely beautiful Norwegian model. And they're also incredibly nice, which is infuriating, maddening, because they're good people. But to make his way through Cornell, he modeled for Abercrombie. You're just like, fuck you, and we love him. Anyway, he was talking about once he was in the jungles of Peru and he had to chase a porcupine out of his hut with his acoustic guitar. You were like. Like, gently nudge it out. But I was like, if these are the type of stories that field biologists have, I need to hear more of them. Because the idea of, like, a shirtless Abercrombie model having to scoot a porcupine out of a hut with an acoustic guitar was like, those are the stories that need to be heard.

[Dr. Tim Bean]

That was, like. To follow up on that. Like, that also, for me, it was when I was, like, 20, I was camping with my sister and some friends on the Appalachian Trail. We were sleeping in this lean to. And all night, there was this bizarre sound coming from underneath the lean to. Like, nobody slept. We were afraid to look to see what it was, and we just could not figure out what it was. And then, like, years later, she called me, and she was like, I was just watching this nature documentary, and it was porcupines having sex. That's the noise that we heard all night long. So, yeah, I think, like, that's another appeal of porcupines is, like, I just think everybody, especially ecologists who have been in the field for a long time, just have this sort of, like, they have a story or curiosity or question that they maybe never got around to researching. But, yeah, everybody's got one.

[Listener/Co-host]

Well, all night long. Was it like, their anniversary or was there an Orgy.

[Dr. Tim Bean]

Their reproductive system is weird, so I can walk you through it.

[Listener/Co-host]

Yeah.

[Dr. Tim Bean]

So female porcupines are either pregnant or lactating 11 months out of the year.

[Alie Ward]

Oh, God.

[Dr. Tim Bean]

They have, like, for their body size, one of the longest pregnancy periods of any mammal. So they're pregnant for about seven months and then lactating for four months, and then they have a month off and then do it all over again 11.

[Alie Ward]

Months out of the year. Preggers are nursing. They get one month off. Give these ladies a break, Mother Nature. Why do you hate them? Now, an elderly porcupine would be, like, 10 years old, but usually they only live to around five in the wild. Now, the upside of that short life is you start early, you're horny, you're ready to reproduce at 18 months old. But those uber maternal lady porcupines, though.

[Dr. Tim Bean]

But they're only in estrus for, like, 12 hours every year.

[Listener/Co-host]

Wow.

[Dr. Tim Bean]

So what happens is they send out some pheromones in there or some kind of olfactory signal in their urine to say, I'm about to go into estrus, like, if there's any males around. And so that, again, is where the big nose comes in, as I think males who are a couple miles away can smell that. Hello, ladies. So the males start congregating, and then there's a period of competition where, you know, generally, like, the largest, I think, like, one of the older males generally dominates and wins access to the female. Other males, you know, go away, and then the male who wins pees on the female.

[Listener/Co-host]

Oh.

[Dr. Tim Bean]

Which. Which is documented in Marty Stelford's Wild America episode, the Prickly Porcupine. You can see it for yourself if you really want to. The young male catches the scent given off by a female. The aroma of her vaginal mucus mixed with urine tells him that she's in estrus. For his grand finale, the male anoints his intended in a shower of urine. Witnesses to this bizarre ritual claim that powerful bursts may travel over six feet, which is thought to, like, stimulate estrus to actually happen. And then copulation takes about one to five minutes, and then they're doing it for about eight hours, and then they go their separate ways for another year.

[Alie Ward]

Wait.

[Listener/Co-host]

If copulation takes one to five minutes and they're doing it for eight hours, is there a refractory period?

[Dr. Tim Bean]

I imagine so, yeah. So they'll do it and then take a couple minutes off for an hour off and then get back to it.

[Alie Ward]

Wow.

[Listener/Co-host]

Usually the same dominant male and then all the other ones who made the commute are just like well I guess bye.

[Dr. Tim Bean]

Yeah, better luck next year.

[Listener/Co-host]

What about their locomotion? Because if they have a 12 hour window to make it a couple miles to maybe get a chance with a lady, are they just booking ass? How are they getting there?

[Dr. Tim Bean]

Well I think that's what the peeing on the female does is like is she goes into this sort of pre estrus period that's like I'm almost ready. And then it's going to take a while for the males to get over here. They are pretty slow. They. Yeah, they're slow. It's going to take them a while to get there and figure out who's going to be the one with access. So I think that's sort of the function of the peeing on the female is like once all that's sorted out, now it's time to trigger the actual estrus period.

[Listener/Co-host]

So she like sends out a text, she sends out a group text or tweet and then she waits for them to uber their little asses over.

[Dr. Tim Bean]

Anybody up?

[Listener/Co-host]

Yeah. Well, is it. How do they. With all of the quills?

[Dr. Tim Bean]

Yeah.

[Listener/Co-host]

Are they just missionary style? How are they doing that?

[Dr. Tim Bean]

It's the rose delicately puts it the typical mammal position. So like the way dogs do it. So she lifts her tail which again the bottom of it doesn't have any quills on it and then the male gets behind her and the bottom, their stomach doesn't have quills on it either. So it's sort of like quillis area to quillus area and then he. Yep. Enters from behind.

[Alie Ward]

So remember the bottom of her tail is like a soft quill less landing strip that she lays down on her own back for his little tender quill.

[Listener/Co-host]

Less belly and he doesn't get quilled.

[Dr. Tim Bean]

You know, I'm sure it happens.

[Listener/Co-host]

Yeah, that's awkward. But for the most part the muscles that would sort of like boyo yoing them are not going to be activated.

[Dr. Tim Bean]

Right, exactly.

[Listener/Co-host]

Okay, that makes sense evolutionarily. Right. Because that would really be a conflict of interest.

[Dr. Tim Bean]

Yep. And that's probably partly why they don't have quills on the base of their tail and on their stomach as well. The other interesting evolutionary thing about the quills is they're antibiotic and antibacterial. So like, you know, you would sort of think that from a defense perspective it would be great if they infected the quill. You know, a mountain lion or a fisher or something that's trying to attack them. But because they quill themselves so much, the thinking is they evolved These antibacterial properties so they wouldn't infect themselves or their mate.

[Alie Ward]

It's like Edward scissorhands, but Edward syringe fingers. And each one comes loaded with just a little doxycycline, no co pay.

[Listener/Co-host]

Oh, what a bummer for them.

[Alie Ward]

How long are they alive?

[Dr. Tim Bean]

They can be pretty long lived. So Rose documented one that was like 20 years old and they can live to 20 or 25 years in captivity.

[Alie Ward]

Now, usually we save our patron audio questions for the second half, but who cares? Nothing matters. We're gonna break the rules. Let's lose our minds. My mind's already lost. Let's get unhinged. Let's get rebellious with a Patreon question early. Hi, this is Erin Ryan from Vancouver, and I grew up in a porcupine.

[Listener/Co-host]

Area and I just want to know.

[Alie Ward]

Why I've never seen one. And if that seems unfair to you, thank you. Yeah, Erin, it does.

[Listener/Co-host]

I hate that for you.

[Alie Ward]

Now, how do you not go to a zoo to see one?

[Listener/Co-host]

How hard is it to see a porcupine? Are they just up in the trees? And good luck.

[Dr. Tim Bean]

If you live in a snowy area, that's kind of the best time to see them because their tracks are so clear. And so finding their tracks is a great way to find one. Otherwise, they create these nip twigs so they'll sit, you know, sit in a tree and eat leaves all night and they'll like, you know, break a branch off, eat all the leaves, and then drop the branch to the ground. So if you know what you're looking for, like a tree with a bunch of branches with leaves stripped off of them, that's probably a good place to look up otherwise. Yeah, or just like, wait for your stupid dog to find one.

[Listener/Co-host]

Does your dog know how to, like, go sniff them out? Why are dogs getting porcupined so much?

[Dr. Tim Bean]

I just saw a paper that said that was pretty breed specific, like, oh, no, German shepherds and Rottweilers. Those are ones that are more, you know, somebody went through old vet records and said, oh, these are the breeds that are more likely to do it. They stink. So porcupines have this really unique warning odor that smells like nothing I've ever smelled before, really. And so I think dogs are definitely responding to that.

[Alie Ward]

While editing this episode, I spotted a note in the transcript left by lead editor Mercedes Maitland. She just wanted to tell me that her quote, now departed family dog, a standard poodle named Bentley, got quilled by the same dead porcupine three times. She continues, we lived in the country, and he would go off and find it in the woods. My parents eventually had to comb the woods, she says, for the carcass so they could dump it somewhere far, far away. Bentley was otherwise a very smart dog, but I guess that porcupine smell was just too hard to resist. He also got skunked a few times in his six years, she said, So I guess he was not smart when it came to his nose. Mercedes wanted to tell me that. I wanted to tell you that, Mercedes, that's insane, and I love it. Also, if you're just now realizing that you have a special interest in the musk of large rodents, you can enjoy our recent Castrology episode on beavers, in which we discuss at length how their internal scent sacks made it into your ice cream way back then. Anyway, let's return to that thorn pig stink.

[Listener/Co-host]

When you say, nothing I've ever smelled before, I understand that. Then that means that none of us can possibly understand. But would you say it's closer to the skunk? Closer to the. The fragrance of a rose? Fruity, musky.

[Dr. Tim Bean]

Yeah. The chemical composition supposedly has, like, components of walnuts and pineapple or coconut or something, but, like, you got to take that and, like, ferment it in a dead rat for a while to really get it. It's like, sweet and musky.

[Listener/Co-host]

As a field ecologist who is looking for porcupines, if you start to smell that on the wind, are you excited?

[Dr. Tim Bean]

I guess to the point where it's like, okay, I'm getting a signal. There's a porcupine hidden in the tree above me somewhere. I think I can smell it. Yeah, great.

[Alie Ward]

I looked around to find some other olfactory analogs to porcupine essence, and I saw it suggests a strong cheese mixed with weed and barnyard animals. But the most compelling comparison I read was from a wildlife rehabber on Reddit who described it as just like, human body odor and ripe. So a squeaky, grunting gym bag that can pierce your face. It's thrilling.

[Listener/Co-host]

What is that like when it's spotted? When someone's like, there it is, there it is. Is that like a kind of routine, or does that make your whole day?

[Dr. Tim Bean]

It's definitely makes your day. It's great. I mean, you know, it's like you're walking around in the middle of summer at night in this beautiful dune forest. Like, that's good enough on its own, but you don't really know when you're going to find the next one, and you're kind of struggling to get as Many callers out as quickly as possible. So seeing one is awesome. I mean, that's like, you know, that's true for any wildlife, I think. Whenever you're hiking and you're like, oh, my God, there's a bobcat on the trail. You're out there by yourself, and then suddenly you're with a porcupine. It's amazing.

[Listener/Co-host]

You're like, our posse just grew by one. Yeah, well, you mentioned summer nights. Do they tend to hibernate in the winter? Are they nocturnal? Why is that a good time?

[Dr. Tim Bean]

They don't hibernate. I mean, summer just for practical reasons, like, that's when students and I are not in class, but generally they're nocturnal. And then they sleep in the day, but they're out year round. They'll congregate in dens in colder areas to keep warm, but they're still out in the middle of winter trying to get food.

[Listener/Co-host]

What do you think of Teddy the porcupine?

[Alie Ward]

This is Teddy Bear, your favorite zooniversity porcupine.

[Listener/Co-host]

We know Teddy Bear likes corn, but.

[Alie Ward]

I thought we'd see if Teddy liked pumpkins today.

[Dr. Tim Bean]

What is that, Ted? What is it? Yeah, Teddy's the best. I mean, what a great ambassador and such a sweetie. And of course, we were all like, when are we gonna hear these noises? I know, like, forget the smell. If I can be out here, like, listening for the smacks and the chomps and everything.

[Listener/Co-host]

I was so worried you were gonna say Teddi is. And then, like, a long pause. Complicated. And, like, finding out Teddi was racist or was, like, illegally poached or something.

[Alie Ward]

Just a quick side note. Teddy Bear, the porcupine, is a rescue critter taken in by Idaho's Earth Fire Institute. And they say he's a robust, sometimes moody animal who accepts fresh willow branches and spruce logs. But he likes other treats. And his caretakers note that Teddy was once called Piney until, via an animal communicator, he voiced that he wanted to be called something softer and cuddlier, as he didn't feel his essence was prickly at all. And the sanctuary notes that, as most people don't know that porcupines are sweet. And changing Piney's name to Teddy Bear will be a good opportunity for education. And now Teddy is famous on the Internet.

[Listener/Co-host]

When Teddy eats a pumpkin, say, and our brains get flooded with serotonin, do most porcupines make that noise if they're munching on something? Or is Teddy just particularly like, a bon vivant?

[Dr. Tim Bean]

Yeah, he's a Real esthete. I think think what's happening is those are the noises that a baby porcupine called a porcupet makes when it's nursing porcupet.

[Alie Ward]

This one word is the thin string holding up my sanity in 2025.

[Dr. Tim Bean]

I think that what's happening is those noises are stimulating milk letdown in the mom, which means, like, they're stimulating the exact chemicals you're talking about, like serotonin and oxytocin. And so I think what's happening with Teddy is like delayed adult whatever. Like, he just never lost that function from being a baby to being an adult. And he still makes those noises, but we generally don't hear them in fully grown wild adult porcupines as much as we would like to.

[Listener/Co-host]

Can I ask you approximately a thousand questions from listeners?

[Dr. Tim Bean]

Yeah, let's do it.

[Listener/Co-host]

Oh, my God. Okay. Stephanie Rosso wants to know, are there any predators that are undeterred by their quills? Like, what are porcupine predators? Curtis Takahashi says it seems like they'd be a very painful prize mouse. Paxton, Anastasia Doherty, Gillian Tangen, John Wallace and Olivia Lester all asked. Olivia asked, what animals don't care about eating the spines?

[Alie Ward]

And we'll get to the answer of that question in just one moment. But first, let's eject some money into a tender cause. And this week it's the Native American Fish and Wildlife Society. And the NAFWS is a national tribal organization seeking to expand the exchange of information and management techniques related to self determined tribal fish and wildlife management. Also, Tim told me that one soapbox he'd like to get on is that Congress passed the 1973 Endangered Species act to appropriate some money to research on species of special concern. However, Tim told me federally recognized tribes are not eligible to apply for these funding sources. They have a separate and much smaller pot of money that's dedicated to tribal management of wildlife, and it amounts to about one sixth of the money per acre, which sucks. And Tim wanted you to know about that and also that the Native American Fish and Wildlife Society is a worthy cause. So thank you to Tim for the heads up and to the NAFWs for their work and to everyone who cares about land stewardship and ecology. And that donation was made possible by our sponsors. This podcast is sponsored, brought to you by Squarespace.

[Listener/Co-host]

I am a happy Squarespace customer and I have been sincere. The start of Ologies. Right before I launched Ologies, I was.

[Alie Ward]

Like, I have to do a website.

[Listener/Co-host]

I gotta make my personal website. How am I going to do This I procrastinated for three years and then.

[Alie Ward]

I heard about Squarespace on another podcast.

[Listener/Co-host]

And I was like, I'm going to try it. Turns out I'm in love with them. Squarespace is an all in one website platform. Squarespace makes it really easy to just.

[Alie Ward]

Make a beautiful website.

[Listener/Co-host]

They have great templates. They have drag and drop tools. It's really easy. Easy to edit and change.

[Alie Ward]

You can engage with your audience.

[Listener/Co-host]

You can sell anything from products to content to time all in one place. And you can get 10% off your first purchase of a website or [e-mail] Ologies Squarespace really makes it easy for people and I talking about myself, to make the website of your dreams. So check out squarespace.com for a free.

[Alie Ward]

Trial and then when you're ready to.

[Listener/Co-host]

Launch squarespace.comologies to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. You can do it.

[Alie Ward]

I did it. You can do it. I know I usually save my secrets.

[Listener/Co-host]

For the end of the episode, but I'm going to tell you my secret favorite candy. It's Reese's Peanut Butter Cups.

[Alie Ward]

It's really Reese's. Anything but.

[Listener/Co-host]

Reese's Peanut Butter Cups are the thing.

[Alie Ward]

That I'm like, have I had a bad day? I get these. Have I had a good day? I get these chocolate, salty, pepper, peanut butter. The textures.

[Listener/Co-host]

I love everything about them.

[Alie Ward]

Also that there's two. So I'm like, oh, I get this.

[Listener/Co-host]

One for later, which is one second later. Anyway, Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. I love you. That's all. If you're me, you can shop Reese's.

[Alie Ward]

Peanut Butter Cups now at a store near you found wherever candy is sold, and I am.

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[Alie Ward]

Okay, back to that question. Who dares to eat a porcupine for lunch? Your dog obviously sucks at it, but some critter must be able to conquer them, right?

[Dr. Tim Bean]

It's mostly about avoiding them. So I don't think there are any animals that are good, at least for North American porcupines. I don't. I don't think there are any predators that are good at dealing with the spines. But mostly we talk about mountain lions and fishers. Mountain lions, it's like a cultural thing. So the mom will teach her children how to eat porcupines. If they're going to do it, you have to learn how to do it. And I think mountain lions will flip the porcupine over and then go at the stomach where there are no quills. I mean, mountain lions are like meticulous cats. So they'll also scrape off all the quills once the porcupine's dead and consume it.

[Alie Ward]

So kind of like how your mom or your guardian might teach you to peel a banana or cut a pineapple or watch your drink at a bar.

[Dr. Tim Bean]

Fishers are a big weasel, and they attack the face, which also doesn't have any quills until it's dead, and then they'll eat through the stomach. There's some cool papers from Wisconsin that suggest that Martins, the smaller weasel, will eat baby porcupines by coming up under the snow. Like, they'll tunnel through the snow and somehow hear the porcupine, or, like, see a porcupine and then tunnel under and then come up and get at the stomach that way. And like, other stuff, like, coyotes have been shown to learn how to catch porcupines, and I think some other species as well, like maybe owls.

[Alie Ward]

So fishers eat the face, Martens eat babies through snow tunnels. Mountain lions go for the guts first. And Tim says that coyotes and bobcats are also able to get a bite of them here and there. And owls, how are owls even attempting this? They're like small chickens. Well, through surprise attacks to the face, sometimes it works out well for them. But wildlife rehabbers tell tales of demoralized owls whose failure has to be plucked out of their flesh one by one. Now, as for the South American porcupines, this 2020 article in the journal Food Webs titled Predation of a Brazilian porcupine by an Ocelot and a Mineral Lick in the Peruvian Amazon, explains that When a patch of salt becomes kind of like a local pub for porcupines, they are vulnerable to the bravest of predators, including the ocelot. Now the African porcupines, they gotta watch out for hyenas and lions and leopards. But how scary are porcupines? Like using numbers?

[Listener/Co-host]

Is it mostly an entry through the face?

[Dr. Tim Bean]

I think it's mostly the belly. Except for fishers, who are just mean like every other weasel.

[Alie Ward]

Yikes.

[Listener/Co-host]

Olivier Callas, Alexander von Fritzi Bitz and his mom Isa Brillard, and eating dog hair for a living. Want to ask? Alexander asks, how many quills do they have? Is there an average number? Is it like 4,000 or does it totally vary by species?

[Dr. Tim Bean]

I'm sure it varies by species. I don't know that there are a lot of studies for every species for North American porcupines, there's 30,000 quills. That's the number that everybody uses and I have been desperately trying to find. There's two separate papers where people have counted quills on North American porcupines and they both came up with about 30,000, both of them. The introduction reads like somebody's getting punished, like they did something wrong and their advisor was like, just go count quills.

[Listener/Co-host]

I was going to ask, like, how do you get that job?

[Dr. Tim Bean]

In terms of average, as far as I know, only two people have ever counted all 30,000. So hard to come up with a comparison.

[Listener/Co-host]

Oh man. I think that if you were really feeling like, not super social, it would be nice to just be like, I'm just gonna dip in the back and just count some quills for a while. Yeah, nobody talked to me.

[Alie Ward]

Everywhere you Google every old yellowed mammalogy book you scour, you will find that 30,000 quills quote. And I kept digging further and further for the true source. And it led me to a 1972 paper that then quoted ER Hall's Mammals of Nevada, which is a famed and well respected 1946 book which had no cited source. But every other paper I found cited the 1946 book or each other. I was on this research loop. It felt like driving in a roundabout. But finally I located a more recent 2017 paper in the Journal of Dairy and Veterinary Sciences by a researcher out of the University of Calgary. And it was titled Getting to the Point, how many Quills does a North American porcupine have? And the methodology section read, the dorsal surface or back was denuded and the quills sorted. Quills were then counted by the number of sharp pointed ends. The results, the author counted 44,006 quills, which they note is 46.7% greater than the original claim of 30,000 quills made by E.R. hall in 1946. Now, this information means nothing to you probably, but I needed to find out to get a little bit of closure in my life. Also, Counting up to 44,000 sounds tedious, but it has been done for science.

[Listener/Co-host]

People wanted to know, when do they get the quills?

[Alie Ward]

Ruby Gordon, Issa Brillard, Olivia Lester, Gretchen Schroeder, Katie Brd, Cheryl Buettner, Brittany Corrigan, Nicole Kleinman, Sammy Annalise De Young, Alexa Roth.

[Listener/Co-host]

And Jonathan asks, is it painful for a mama porcupine to give birth? Julia Bingham wanted to know, are they born spiky? When do their pricks become properly prickly? Chrysalis said, I pet a baby porcupine once, right on his soft little snoot.

[Dr. Tim Bean]

Oh, my God, I envy you.

[Listener/Co-host]

He didn't have sharp quills yet. So, yeah, when do they start to grow those?

[Dr. Tim Bean]

And I cannot emphasize enough how cute porcupettes are. It's like, I can't. And photographs do not capture the, like, oh, my God, they're so small and, like, so cute. And just have no idea how painful they could be. But they are born with quills, but the quills haven't, like, hardened yet. So the quills are soft and they're born, I think, head first so that, you know, the quills are sort of pointing backwards in North American porcupines. So they're coming out not against the grain. And then within a couple of hours, the quills will harden.

[Listener/Co-host]

Oh, within a few hours, yeah. And you said they're made of keratin. Is that kind of like having a soggy fingernail that dries out?

[Dr. Tim Bean]

This is a great question. I'm guessing it's like having a wet fingernail.

[Alie Ward]

Yeah. Interesting. This next one was asked by Charlotte Parkinson, Olivia Callis, Lisa Gorman, Jennifer Lemon, Anthony Richards, Caitlin Morrison, Carol Catherine Vella.

[Listener/Co-host]

Emily Tutero and Aurora Cullen. And Zed Shirogane wanted to know, in Zed's words, do they regrow the spines that they lose during altercations, or is it just a one and done deal? Like, do they shed them and regrow them like we do hair?

[Dr. Tim Bean]

Yeah.

[Listener/Co-host]

Oh, so they just come and go?

[Dr. Tim Bean]

Yeah.

[Listener/Co-host]

Does that mean that you might find porcupine quills just in the leaf litter in the forest?

[Dr. Tim Bean]

Yeah, definitely. I mean, I think that you could. I think it's the proverbial needle in a haystack trying to find a single quill in the leaf litter. But if they're fighting, like if the males are fighting or you know, in some circumstances the females are more territorial and they will fight over territories, then they will quill each other. Or if a porcupine falls, then a bunch of quills come out. Like that's I think a more likely scenario where you might just find them in nature where they've come out in sort of a pile rather than just.

[Alie Ward]

A lone quill mouse.

[Listener/Co-host]

Paxton, Chris, Curious, Danai Sprouse and Lisa Vers wanted to know what is the best way to remove quills from a pet if they go after a porcupine mouse? Asks Dana Sprouse asked, said they suck to yank out of a dog's nose. So deny. I'm sorry about your dog. How do vets get them out?

[Dr. Tim Bean]

I am not a vet. I think that they, if there's a lot of them, I think they'll anesthetize them first and then just pull them out. I was reading that there's, you know, some people talk about cutting them, like clipping them ahead of time to like let air out or pressure out or something. And I think that might be sort of an old wives tale. And you, you gotta just kind of go through with pliers and pull them out one by one and as soon as possible, otherwise they'll start migrating into the body and causing real problems.

[Alie Ward]

Okay, so I dipped deeper into this topic and I found an article written by Dr. Seth Bynum, a veterinarian and also presumably a hunter, as it was published in the magazine Gundog. But he says that as long as the pup is safely restrained, you can use pliers or like a leatherman to grip them one by one at the base of the quill. And he writes, employ a firm and purposeful grip and pull with the same enthusiasm. But it might hurt a little. And so go slow and don't get.

[Listener/Co-host]

Greedy is his advice.

[Alie Ward]

Or you risk breaking the quills off if you try to remove them like several at a time. And when you're removing them, he says put them all in one place or like in a dish of water so they don't roll around or get lost underfoot and then stab you doub. Now if the victim has a bunch around the eyes or in the mouth, Seth says a vet visit is in order because there are nooks and crannies that quills can burrow into, like in the gums or the eye. And left undiscovered, that can lead to a lot of pain, obviously and infection and the vet also can sedate your poor dog, which if it were me, I'd be like, hell yeah, give me that sweet, sweet nectar and render me numb. I'm out now. This article also did me the favor of busting flimflam in that cutting quills does not make them easier to remove. It just wastes time while the tissue gets more inflamed and the quills kind of deepen their grip. And also, while if you love it lube it is generally good life advice, it does not apply to this situation as Seth writes that it just results in little more than a slippery dog and tools that can't get their grip. And yeah, when in doubt, see a vet Veterinarians, we love you. Your work is hard. You're worth every penny. If my hairy daughter Gremmy ever got needle blasted, I would be ubering a medevac.

[Listener/Co-host]

Emily Krieger Benjamin Shantae first swim question asker Charlie Eisman, Lindsey Malone and Issa wanted to know about their personality. Emily asks, do they have a vibe? Nervous? Irritable? Curious? Chill? Shantae said, I feel like porcupines always look so chill and calm. Do the quills mean that most predators leave them alone? Charlie Eisman says, Are they as oblivious as they seem? Judgmental, but a good question. What are they like?

[Dr. Tim Bean]

Yeah, I mean, I think like every species has sort of a root personality, right? I mean, and I think it's okay to anthropomorphize in that sense. Like, weasels are different from horses, are different from cows, and porcupines definitely have a type. They're kind of slow, they're pretty sweet, they seem pretty chill. But then within that, I mean, like every other species, like dogs or cats or humans, like, individuals have total personalities like the angrier ones and the sweeter ones and the dopier ones. And so there's real variation that you can tell between them.

[Alie Ward]

Tim drew a beautiful comparison that will live with me forever.

[Dr. Tim Bean]

1 Sorry, I meant to add, like, they're basically sloths, right? Like, sloths are also folivores, which means that they get very little energy from their diet and that's why they're so slow. And the only way to avoid predators for sloths is to, like, be up in the tree and camouflage as much as possible. North American porcupines are like just sort of another evolutionary solution to getting food from leaves as your main diet source is like, they also are pretty low energy and not super smart. But rather than camouflage, they evolved this incredible defense mechanism.

[Alie Ward]

Porcupines, hellraiser sloths forever now, are they well liked in nature? Are they lonely for other forest companions? Asked Cinnamon. Win Costantini, Isa Brillard, Alexander Kidd, Average Pie, Colin Robottom, Mark d, Annalise Young, Pabu, 34, and Emily.

[Listener/Co-host]

Oh, a bunch of people did ask about social structure. Edwin Munro wanted to know, are they friends with any other woodland creatures? And Yasmin Alou said, I saw a porcupine in an aquarium that was almost always curled up in a corner on its stick. Are they social creatures or was it depressed? They want to know. Should I contact the aquarium? Yes. But, like, are they solitary creatures?

[Dr. Tim Bean]

Well, they're nocturnal, so I think that's like an issue with zoos in general for porcupines is they're probably just sleepy.

[Alie Ward]

Imagine it's the middle of the night in your bedroom and a steady stream of screaming, sticky children are just parading through, being like, I don't know, her energy seems kind of off. You're like, begone, off with you. But porcupines, do they party?

[Dr. Tim Bean]

Yeah, it's sort of a mix. I have not seen them socializing with other forest creatures. But, you know, I mean, the mom is with her porcupet four plus months, and they are, you know, she's teaching them, like, here's how you climb a tree, and these are the preferred foods that we like to eat. And then there are certain situations where they will hang out together, whether it's in places like California where they're sharing those. Those willow patches, or in places where it's snowy and cold and they'll share a den with each other. But they seem, I think, I would say, generally kind of indifferent to one another. If they're not aggressively defending a territory.

[Listener/Co-host]

How are they getting these dens? Because some. The Eurasian African, an expert once told me that they. They burrow. The expert is you. And it was a few minutes ago. But what, when the arboreal ones, are they able to dig a. Or do they find like, an old badger haunt or they find, like a rock cave?

[Dr. Tim Bean]

I think in most places it's like rock piles or downed trees or like hollow living trees or standing dead, hollow trees. And so that's a really important part of porcupine ecology, is in places in winter where they need a den. That could be a really limiting factor for porcupines is not having enough dens or enough shelter. In California, in this dune system, they were in, like, these burrows in the dunes, and it really. We didn't witness it, but it really seemed like they were the ones that were digging out these burrows in the sand and maintaining them themselves.

[Listener/Co-host]

You know, a few people asked about nutrients, Verena Runstadler and Felipe Jimenez wanted to know why they like salt. Felipe said, I heard that porcupines have a surprising craving for salt and will even gnaw on sweaty tools or clothes to get it. Does that have a physiological reason or is it just taste?

[Dr. Tim Bean]

And oldest Rose, again, I just keep coming back to him. His book is so wonderful. But he was talking to a summer camp owner, and the summer camp owner was like, why do only the boys cabins have porcupine damage on them?

[Listener/Co-host]

Oh, my God.

[Dr. Tim Bean]

And oldest Rose is like, because boys are peeing on their cabin.

[Listener/Co-host]

Wow.

[Dr. Tim Bean]

They. So all vertebrates need to maintain a one to one ratio of potassium to sodium. It's like, critical. Like, potassium and sodium ions are used in nerve and muscle cell function. And a lot of herbivores, plants tend to be really high in potassium. And so herbivores almost universally face this problem of how do you get enough sodium to balance the, like, huge amounts of potassium that you get through your diet? So, yeah, porcupines are one of those, and they will seek out salt, sodium wherever they can find it.

[Alie Ward]

I watched a video of porcupine legend Aldous Rose in a little shed in the woods that he uses to attract porcupines.

[Dr. Tim Bean]

And Rose and, like, a bunch of other people use salt blocks to attract porcupines so they could catch them.

[Listener/Co-host]

Oh, that's gotta be such a find for a porcupine.

[Dr. Tim Bean]

Yeah, I mean, he. And he was saying, like, you know, it was like a shed outside of his cabin that he would just put these salt sticks out, and porcupines from kilometers around, once they learned about it, would come in to. To take advantage.

[Listener/Co-host]

Kdb, Matt Thompson and Mallory Avery wanted to know about cars. Mallory says, my dad has a story of a porcupine eating the wires on the underside of his truck when parked in the woods. But up in the mountains in British Columbia, Kate B. Says, a lot of the trailheads have chicken wire that you can borrow to wrap around the base of your vehicle. Maybe they chew your brake lines. Is this flim flam? Have you heard of that much?

[Dr. Tim Bean]

Yeah. No. So it's totally real. And for rodents in general, like, we deal with that with jackrabbits, like, they're always chewing on various lines and stuff. And I'm not totally sure on the chemical composition for the underside of a car in general, but for porcupines, especially the further north you go, you know, cars are going to be covered in Salt. So like we distribute a lot of sodium on the roads, which is a problem for porcupines who are salt driven in early spring and they results in a lot of roadkills. But I think that probably also is an attractant. Like if you're, if you're driving around and you got a bunch of sodium splashed up to the underside of your car, that's probably also attracting them.

[Alie Ward]

If only we had like a whole episode about roadkill. Look at that. Boy, howdy. We do. It's linked in the show. Notes roadkill ecology. It's a banger. Also patrons Benjamin Susan Osborne, Mag Zaroni and Shuli Rank, first time question asker asked about their numbers. Let's talk numbers.

[Listener/Co-host]

Well, you mentioned that cars can be, they're, you know, an ultimate predator for them, essentially on accident. But how are populations doing? You mentioned that indigenous populations are asking where they went. But overall, what are you finding there?

[Dr. Tim Bean]

We don't really know. And there's just not like a really great funding source to study this at scale. There's a lot of anecdotal evidence from western North America that they seem to be declining. There was a graduate student in Montana who set out to do her thesis on porcupines and then couldn't find any. And so her thesis kind of shifted gears there. Like there just seems to be a bunch of people everywhere are noticing there aren't as many porcupines as we used to see. And in New York they've gone through a couple of scabies outbreaks, which is really horrible and awful for them and pretty devastating for the populations.

[Alie Ward]

So there are a few theories about porcupine booms and busts. And Tim says that one researcher, Richard Schweitzer's work shows that one single mountain lion can really reduce porcupine numbers pretty quickly. And another factor is a timber industry. And in the Pacific Northwest in Northern California, there used to be these old growth Douglas fir redwood stands. But porcupines do not love to eat them. Now, once the lumber industry mowed down all those older trees, what grew in their place were different plant sources that they loved like a stoner loves fourth meal. So their populations exploded. And in the 1970s, researchers predicted the natural decline from that baby porcupet boom, partly because timber companies could say, look, they're doing fine, but that was temporary. Now, speaking of a porcupine menu.

[Listener/Co-host]

So, okay, they strip the tree, they strip the bark off the trees. Are they eating it?

[Dr. Tim Bean]

Yeah. So in summer when there's leaves on the trees, they eat the leaves and then like fruit, like apples and stuff like that. And then in winter, there's no leaves left, and so they have to scrape the outer bark off and then they consume the inner bark, which is like a terrible nutritional strategy. They lose like 25% of their body weight.

[Alie Ward]

Tim emailed me after this interview to say he wanted to shout out a couple of researchers, Kara Appel and Parisa Bellamarek, who found that porcupines have more foresight than me. And they seem to scout out winter habitat during the summer. So ahead of times in the dunes where they were in the middle of summer, they would go out to their winter homes in the fore dunes to look for the best shelters. And then they'd just go back to those places that were most protected from the wind and the rain the following winter. So they remembered where to go. Also in terms of like, moving to a new town for porcupines, Tim mentioned that oldest rose hypothesized that they eat each other's poop and they rely on others gut bacteria to digest the local plants. So Rose postulates that when a porcupine moves to a new area and gets the runs from eating new kind of leaves, the best way to get the local bacteria is by eating another porcupine's poop. Tummy's all better. But yes, porcupine decline is of course impacted by human interest, but by damaging.

[Dr. Tim Bean]

Trees, they become pests for timber operators. And so both like the feds and private timber companies spend spent the entire 20th century hunting and killing porcupines all over the place. So that's another reason why they're declining. But the benefit is you get all of these dead and decadent trees and trees that are falling down and trees that are exposed to fungus and stuff that almost surely contributes to diversity. Bugs are getting access to the inner bark. That's drawing in woodpeckers. Woodpeckers are then creating cavities in the trees that's providing holes to and dens and stuff for other mammals.

[Listener/Co-host]

And so were timber industries in conjunction with the government, putting like a hit, like a price on their heads kind of like they did wolves.

[Dr. Tim Bean]

Yeah. Up through the 50s, I mean, I think Vermont killed like 100,000 porcupines per year, you know, just in one state every year with a small bounty on their skins. And I think or hope that, you know, this next generation of, like, ecological foresters are beginning to appreciate the fact that some of these species that damage trees are contributing to overall diversity. And maybe there's like a balance between cutting every tree down and killing every porcupine and, like, maybe leaving some so that they will help increase the health of the forest. And, you know, mountain lions are doing fairly well in Northern California and other parts of the Northwest. Cannabis growing uses a lot of rodenticide because porcupines come, you know, not just porcupines, but rodents in general, come and gnaw on their water lines and probably eat their crops. And so that's, you know, a huge issue for a lot of species now is the widespread application of rodenticide on both public and private lands. And it goes up the food chain.

[Listener/Co-host]

Do you think with the cannabis farms, are they just getting cooked? Are they just so baked?

[Dr. Tim Bean]

Yeah, sure. Yeah. I think a lot of animals probably are taking advantage of that. Yep.

[Listener/Co-host]

Interesting. They're like, listen, you be born with quills, you break your bones falling out of a tree. I need to. I need to unwind.

[Dr. Tim Bean]

It seems really hard for porcupines because I had this student where we put this accelerometer on porcupine, and it was like, the accelerometer is not recording anything. Like, it could be sleeping or walking or eating. And, like, the accelerometer is not moving at all. Like, they're so chill to begin with that I can't even imagine what it would be like to be high.

[Alie Ward]

Yeah, rodents can get high from eating the ganja. Maybe not as high as your roommate who simmered it in ghee, but, you know, like, not. Not high.

[Listener/Co-host]

Are their populations doing okay? Or should we put Save the Porcupines, like, on our to do lists?

[Dr. Tim Bean]

That is on the to do list. So California, I think, lists it as a species of special concern, which is, like, the first step before getting on the endangered species list, which means that it's now eligible for, like, additional funding. And that's sort of where we're at, is like, there's a bunch of researchers across the western US who are noticing this problem and starting to think about, okay, how do we actually count porcupines and how do we get enough data longitudinally, like, through time to see that they really have declined, not just from this sort of elevated baseline that we saw in the 60s and 70s after all these clear cuts, but, like, truly are disappearing from large parts of their range where they really should be. There's still lots of places. There are still lots of porcupines. It's not like a hair on fire situation, but it's. If I had more time and money, that would definitely be a priority. Would be, like, just documenting and knowing how they're doing.

[Listener/Co-host]

I love that if you won Powerball, you'd be like, I'd be out there looking for porcupines.

[Dr. Tim Bean]

Yeah, for sure.

[Listener/Co-host]

Well, actually, I've been thinking about your life and if you don't mind, and you have to have a vase full of quills somewhere. Like, you must have a collection of quills in a jar in a pen holder. Where are they? How many do you have?

[Dr. Tim Bean]

I brought some to put on video so I can show you. And it's a combination of like, like, yeah, quills, North America porcupine quills that I've collected. And then also people just give me quills, right? Like, I found this one. Or like, I'm a friend's a zookeeper and had these extra, like African crested porcupine quills. Here, have some. We actually ended up with the research we were doing. My grad students, Cara Apple and Persa Bellamric, organized, like, giving most of the quills that we got to the tribes that we were working with because, like, again, they, you know, they used to go out and get the quills by hand and then nowadays they have to mail order them. So I was like, we got a bunch of extra quills. Like, you guys should have these.

[Listener/Co-host]

You know, a few people. Daisy Moser, who's up in Alaska, said, I know people appear in Alaska who throw blankets on them to collect the quills for making traditional jewelry. Daisy says, seems better than the alternative way of getting them, which is, I imagine, getting clubbed in the face with a tail. But is that traditionally how indigenous folks are getting them? And also a few people L wenk wanted to know as a crafter, porcupine pills are useful as tools and part of craft material. What's the best legal way to get them? And Olivia Lester wanted to know, how do humans use them, like for weaponry or tools or writing? What are the ways that porcupine quills are obtained by humans and what uses have you seen kind of like throughout.

[Dr. Tim Bean]

History, so obtaining quills in modern times? A person that I talked to in Humboldt who was like, I can't find porcupines on my normal route. She was like, you know, I just drive around and there were these roads where I would know at night I could go find a porcupine, see a porcupine, park the car, grab my. She used a towel rather than a blanket. You know, thwap the porcupine on the back, take the quills, and then, you know, you got a renewable, sustainable source of quills. So, yeah, towel versus blanket method.

[Listener/Co-host]

I don't know, and it doesn't hurt them, the porcupine, to eject them, I.

[Dr. Tim Bean]

Think, you know, I think probably like when you get to the point where you've got full coverage on the body, I'm guessing that not all of the quills got pushed down and released and you are pulling some out. But I think it's probably a temporary. And again, better than, you know, killing them and getting the quills that way. Yeah, uses like there's documentation of all kinds of things. And the quill work for decoration is the. The is the most beautiful, I think, and widespread. And people dyed them like all kinds of incredible colors like European colonizers would write about. Like they're using colors that we can't access, like yellows and purples and reds and blacks and just really incredible weaving of the quills together and into other materials like deer skin and leather rawhide for decoration on all kinds of clothing and bags and stuff like that. The bristles on the tail were used for hair combs and brushes. And then there's a couple of papers that claimed that in sugar maple country people would modify the quills to tap the maple syrup.

[Listener/Co-host]

So as a tool for decor, for a bunch of uses, I mean, to have that kind of characterized thing, it's gotta be valuable. What about flim Flam? What's the most annoying misconception about porcupines?

[Dr. Tim Bean]

That they shoot their quills. That's number one. Yeah. So they don't shoot quills. Yeah, no, porcupines shoot their quills. You have to be pretty aggressive to get quelled.

[Alie Ward]

So that settles that. David VilaFranco, Alia Meyers, Pavka34, Erin White, Kurt Swanson, Blair C. Kayla Meyer, Charlotte Short, T N Oz and first time question askers Darian and Emily's mom and Don Ray Oliveira, who bravely admitted to spending most of their life, ahem, for decades, they say, believing that porcupines shot their quills Sonic the Hedgehog style. Hearsay Heresy, Horse Pucky Flim, Flamingo. Now we know.

[Dr. Tim Bean]

And then number two, I guess I would say is the confusion over hedgehogs versus porcupines. Oh yeah. So you know, hedgehogs are not even rodents and so totally evolved independently and same physical structure. They're also keratinized, but yeah, totally different species, I guess.

[Listener/Co-host]

Speaking of hardening, keratinized the stuff Danai Sprouse, Zuleka Pevik wanted to know, in Danai's words, do they have red teeth? Do they have that orange teeth like we just did a beaver episode Is there enamel that kind of like super hard on one side and then soft on the other?

[Dr. Tim Bean]

Yeah, exactly. And then that creates this sort of chisel shape that they use to scrape bark off. And they're continually growing. And just on the incisors, right? The front of the big incisors in the front are. Yeah. Orange.

[Listener/Co-host]

Ah, last listener question. Potato puffer wanted to know, are their bellies soft?

[Dr. Tim Bean]

Sure.

[Listener/Co-host]

I mean, I guess compared to the dorsal side.

[Dr. Tim Bean]

There's no quells on them. They've got the fur, their bellies. So, yeah.

[Listener/Co-host]

Okay, good. Had to know. Last questions I always ask. And I know we've been talking about quills. We've been talking about leather gloves. Is getting quilled the worst part of the job, or is it, like, meetings? Like, are meetings worse than getting quilled?

[Dr. Tim Bean]

The worst part of the job, honestly, is. I won't give you my bummer answer. The worst part of the job is.

[Listener/Co-host]

No, give me your bummer answer.

[Dr. Tim Bean]

When an animal dies, that's totally, absolutely. Like, the few times I've thought about quitting and doing something else is like, you know, I mean, and not just with porcupines, but animals in general. Like, if you're in the field and something goes wrong and you know that you, like, contributed to their death, that's pretty much the worst feeling in the world. The practical answer is, like, just the funding and trying to find ways to fund research that are. That's in sort of this gray area where it's like, it's hard to find the right funder who wants to pay for the stuff that you want to do and keep it going for a really long time.

[Listener/Co-host]

You need some sort of directory of Powerball winners.

[Dr. Tim Bean]

Yeah, benefactor.

[Listener/Co-host]

Yeah, you need a benefactor. Like in the Renaissance, you need a pet matron of some kind. I hope someone listens to this and is like, as a billionaire, I've been looking for a pet cause, and it.

[Dr. Tim Bean]

Turns out, let's save the porcupines.

[Listener/Co-host]

Yeah. Teddy's doing a lot of work, too, for the brand image. You know, I. Teddy's getting paid handsomely in pumpkins and stuff like that, though, which is good. Like, as an influencer, he's got, like, the Lamborghini. What about the best?

[Dr. Tim Bean]

I have so many. And, like, you know, on the teaching side, I get paid to learn and ask questions about stuff that I'm interested in and then share that information with other people, and that's awesome. And then being able to find money to pay early career scientists to go into the field and, like, spend a summer out in the world. Studying animals that they're interested in is also, like, incredible. Just knowing that I've had the opportunity to support, like, you know, spending that much time with focused attention, like learning about some landscape is just an incredible thing that we've set up as a society to make happen.

[Alie Ward]

As the porcupine guy, Tim is just a beacon of knowledge, even for not smart questions.

[Dr. Tim Bean]

People text me all the. Not all the time, but, like, you know, I know a true friend when they're like, I saw a porcupine, here's a photo of it. Or like, my dog just got quilled. Like, here's a photo of that. Those are, you know, brighten my day when that happens. The best part of studying porcupines in the wild, though, was, and it was a total surprise, the scale of the study area was pretty small. Like, you could walk north, south, probably three hours and maybe an hour east, west. Like, from the minute that we got out there and started looking for porcupines, we just started naming things without even talking about it. It was just like, oh, there's this location that this thing happened. We're going to call it that. And there's this really popular, like, willow stand that a bunch of different porcupines were going to call it this. And started naming the porcupines, like, it just felt very instinctive. Like something that humans have been doing for a million years is like. Like walking around as a group and a team looking for animals and learning about the landscape that we're walking through was just really joyful. And seeing that landscape through the porcupine's eyes and going to places that I would never go before and, like, thinking about how they were using the landscape was just, yeah, incredible.

[Listener/Co-host]

Do they have good eyes, by the way?

[Dr. Tim Bean]

I don't think so. I think it's mostly the nose. Yeah.

[Listener/Co-host]

So seeing the landscape through even better than the porcupines.

[Dr. Tim Bean]

Yeah. And not smelling whatever they're smelling.

[Listener/Co-host]

I hope to one day see one in the wild. Who knows? At least I know what to look for. But thank you so much for letting me get to know porcupines. And my wish for you is that someone incredibly wealthy listens to this.

[Dr. Tim Bean]

Thank you so much. It's my pleasure. Thank you so much for your interest in porcupines.

[Listener/Co-host]

Who doesn't have an interest in porcupines?

[Dr. Tim Bean]

Exactly.

[Listener/Co-host]

Get real.

[Dr. Tim Bean]

Thanks, everyone, for your universal love of the best mammal on earth.

[Alie Ward]

So ask ecological people illogical questions because they are much less prickly than you'd fear. Thank you so, so much to Dr. Bean for such a lively discussion of these creatures who are so huggable, at least in our hearts. Now you can find out more about Tim's work and the Native American Fish and Wildlife Society. The links in our show notes and on our website which is also linked in the show notes. Thank you to everyone supporting and submitting [e-mail] Ologies which you can join for one hot dollar. Ologies merch [e-mail] Also side note, we have a kid friendly and classroom safe spinoff show called Smallogies which you can find anywhere you get podcasts. You can look for the new green artwork by Portland based Muralist List Bonnie Dutch. You can spread the word on Smallogies. We are at Ologies on Instagram at bluesky. I'm Allie Ward. Thank you to Aaron Talbert for adminning the Ologies podcast Facebook group. Avileen Malik makes our professional transcripts. Kelly or Dwyer does website. Noel Dilworth is our lovely scheduling producer whose ceiling collapsed during our recent LA rains. Not a big deal. Ali's doing great. We're doing great here. Susan Hale is our managing director who keeps the sky from falling. Jake Chaffee is our capable and very boopable assistant editor and Mercedes Maitland of Maitland Audio is our lead editor and a Canadian who is thankfully still friends with us Americans. Nick Thorburn wrote the theme music and if you stick around to the end of the episode, I tell you a secret. And this week it's that last week I read a review that began thanks Handsome. And I just thought this was a reference to me being like your Internet father and also just generally, I guess, dapper and appealing and it made me feel really good. But it turns out that thanks Handsome was actually in reference to the podcast Handsome, which had just shouted out Ologies. So thank you to the handsomes over at Handsome. I'm embarrassed. Also, please keep speaking out about our Park Service employees, our federal workers, our scientists, researchers, public servants, all the people who work so passionately and diligently to make the United States I live in and everyone on the globe, present and futures. Better read the news.

[Listener/Co-host]

Call congresspeople.

[Alie Ward]

Keep shouting. Keep learning. Keep telling ologists how much we love them. Okay, dad, word.

[Listener/Co-host]

Over and out.

[Alie Ward]

Till next week.

[Listener/Co-host]

Byrbye Pachydermatology, Homeology, Cryptozoology, Lithology, Nanotechnology, Meteorology, Olfactology, Maple Serology, Cellular Technology.

[Alie Ward]

All right.

[Dr. Tim Bean]

Don'T start with me, pork. You're fine. Come here, come here. Give me a hug.