{"id":582,"date":"2006-12-14T13:28:23","date_gmt":"2006-12-14T11:28:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.breigh.com\/wordpress\/archives\/582"},"modified":"2006-12-14T13:32:35","modified_gmt":"2006-12-14T11:32:35","slug":"more-about-harley","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/archives\/582","title":{"rendered":"More About Harley"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>After my post the other day about Harley I&#8217;ve gotten a lot of questions.&nbsp; I&#8217;ve posted about him in the past <a href=\"http:\/\/www.breigh.com\/wordpress\/archives\/481\" target=\"_blank\">welcoming him home<\/a>&nbsp;and showing off <a href=\"http:\/\/www.breigh.com\/wordpress\/archives\/485\" target=\"_blank\">his new bachelor pad<\/a>&nbsp;but it&#8217;s been a while.&nbsp;&nbsp; People are still confused about the whole hedgehog as a pet thing.<\/p>\n<p>Some of the main questions I get are:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Can he shoot his quills like a porcupine?\n<li>Are his quills sharp?\n<li>How big will he get?\n<li>Aren&#8217;t they protected and not allowed as pets in Europe?\n<li>Can you hold him?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I took some photos to give a better view of his size compared to my hand&#8230;<\/p>\n<p> <center><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.breigh.com\/blogpics\/hball1206dsm.jpg\"><\/center> <\/p>\n<p> <center><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.breigh.com\/blogpics\/hball1206esm.jpg\"><\/center> <\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Now I&#8217;ll answer some of the questions and explain all about Harley.<\/p>\n<p>He is an Algerian Chocolate&nbsp;African Pygmy Hedgehog,&nbsp;which is a smaller more domesticated&nbsp;breed than the European Hedgehogs that we see in the wild here in Europe.<\/p>\n<p>The Algerian Chocolate is what he is called due to his coloring and markings.&nbsp; He has chocolate colored bands on his quills and a chocolate colored nose, and he has a &#8216;mask&#8217; on his face which shows that he is Algerian.<\/p>\n<p>Hedgehogs come in many different colors, as you can see on the <a href=\"http:\/\/hedgehogclub.com\/colorguide.html\">color guide<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Hedgehogs cannot shoot their quills when they are frightened, as porcupines can.&nbsp; When they are frightened they make a hissing sound and curl up into a ball, making their quills stand up in end.&nbsp;&nbsp; You can see this in the top photo I posted.&nbsp;&nbsp; Harley was in a grumpy mood because he was sleeping when I took him out of his cage&#8230;&nbsp; so he hissed and puffed up his quills in protest! <\/p>\n<p>You can also see in the photo that I am holding him in my bare hand while his quills are up.&nbsp;&nbsp; The quills are sharp and poke into your hand, but they aren&#8217;t sharp enough to break the skin unless you put a fair bit of pressure on them.&nbsp;&nbsp; You can see my hand in the 2nd photo after he relaxed and came out of the ball, there are no punctures.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s not comfortable, mind you&#8230; but it&#8217;s indeed possible to hold them when they are being &#8216;huffy&#8217;.<\/p>\n<p>Harley has reached almost his full size.&nbsp; He won&#8217;t grow as big as the wild hedgehogs but he may grow a tiny bit bigger than he is in the photos which is much smaller than the European Hedgehogs we see tromping around our gardens.<\/p>\n<p>Also, unlike the European Hedgehog, it is entirely legal to have them as pets here in Europe.&nbsp;&nbsp; The laws differ in other countries, such as in the US I believe it&#8217;s illegal in some states but not in others.&nbsp; You&#8217;d have to look that up yourself.<\/p>\n<p>All in all they make very unique and interesting pets.&nbsp; They are completely nocturnal so you won&#8217;t see much of them during the day.&nbsp; You will, however, hear them puttering around their cage at night and running marathons in their wheel.<\/p>\n<p>They are quite fragile and require very dedicated care in regards to cleaning and environment.&nbsp; They don&#8217;t like the cold and require warm temperatures above 25 degrees celcius.&nbsp; So you have provide that for them (we keep Harley in our spare bedroom where we can regulate the heat).&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>They also need frequent bathing and nail clipping.&nbsp; Their favorite pastime is running in their wheel and they do most of their peeing and pooing during that time so they can get &#8216;poop boots&#8217; and a little dirty.&nbsp; So it&#8217;s up to you to keep them clean&#8230; and their wheel!<\/p>\n<p>Well, that&#8217;s all I can think of at the moment but hopefully it answers some of the questions people have about these adorable little animals!&nbsp; <\/p>\n<p>You can see more photos of Harley <a href=\"http:\/\/www.breigh.com\/wordpress\/pics\/album\/72157594266159785\/Harley.html\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After my post the other day about Harley I&#8217;ve gotten a lot of questions.&nbsp; I&#8217;ve posted about him in the past welcoming him home&nbsp;and showing off his new bachelor pad&nbsp;but it&#8217;s been a while.&nbsp;&nbsp; People are still confused about the whole hedgehog as a pet thing. Some of the main questions I get are: Can &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7051,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-582","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-the-zoo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/582","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=582"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/582\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7051"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}