Kingdom:  Animalia
Phylum:  Chordata
Class:  Mammalia
Order:  Insectivora
Family:  Erinaceidae

    Hedgehogs come in all sizes.  They can be small at about 4-6 inches long and weighing two ounces.  They can be larger at about 10-18 inches long and about three pounds.
    Two kinds of  hedgehogs are the European and the desert hedgehog.  The European kind lives in the woods from England to the Soviet Union and in New Zealand.  The desert one lives on the edge of the Sahara Desert and in Iraq.
    The European hedgehog has about 3000-5000 sharp spines that cover its body.  This helps protect it from enemies.  The hedgehog waddles when it walks but it can run really fast when it needs to.
    Hedgehogs live alone unless it is mating time.  They mate between April and August.  The female is pregnant for six to seven weeks and gives birth to 4 or 5 babies.  The male doesn't hang around to raise these babies.  After five or six weeks, the babies go out on their own.  This animal lives from 5-6 years.
    European hedgehogs eat earthworms, insects, eggs, young birds, and dead animals.  Most of these animals look for food during the daytime but some are nocturnal.  This depends on what kind of hedgehog it is.
    European hedgehogs adapt to their climate with hibernation.  Because they hibernate, they are able to live through cold seasons when they can't get food.  When the outside temperature goes below 59 degrees Fahrenheit, they go into hibernation.  They sleep from October to April.  Their body temperature goes down to about 43 degrees Fahrenheit.  Usually their heart beats about 100 times a minute.  During hibernation, it drops to 10 times a minute.  Their breathing slows down so that their bodies don't need much energy to live.
    European climates have cold seasons and hot seasons.  The hedgehog will hibernate through the cold times and estivate through the hot ones.  This is how they adapt.  European hedgehogs are mostly hibernators with only a little estivation.  The desert hedgehogs are mostly estivators with a tiny bit of hibernation.
    Desert hedgehogs like to eat insects, scorpions, snakes, and dead animals.  When the desert gets really hot, their food supply goes underground.  Estivation, or sleeping through the hottest part of summer, keeps the hedgehog alive.
    Desert hedgehogs live alone and look around for food at night.  They mate once a year between July and September.  The female is pregnant for 5-6 weeks and gives birth to 2-10 babies.  The babies leave their mother after six weeks.
    When the desert hedgehog senses that it is getting too hot, it begins estivation.  It looks for some place cool and goes to sleep.  This usually happens between January and March, the same time as European ones are hibernating.  This is because it is hot in the desert at the same time that it is cold in Europe.
    The desert hedgehog's body slows down but not nearly as much as it would in hibernation.  They will go outside a lot during estivation but they don't do a lot of moving around when they do.  They sleep for about a week at a time until they get done with the really hot weather.
    Desert hedgehogs don't have really cold weather in the desert.  For this reason, they don't really hibernate the same as the European ones do.  The desert hedgehogs' bodies do not slow down as much and if it got really, really cold sometime, a lot of them would die because they haven't adapted that well to extreme cold.  They haven't needed to.

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