As a kid at scout camp, I feared late-night visits to the outhouse. The wooden structure was covered in impressive gnaw marks, left there by a North American porcupine drawn by the salt in urine. No one wanted to bump into a quilled rodent.
I never saw one in an outhouse. My porcupine sightings occurred in the forest. All so-called New World porcupines are arboreal, adapted for life in the trees. They also share other traits, like quills mixed with soft hairs.
Those soft hairs might not be immediately apparent with the North American porcupine. But the Mexican dwarf hairy porcupine is, as biologist Vincent Losasso notes, “an interesting blend of adorable and upsetting.”
He continues, “Their little brown eyes, bulbous pink noses and oversized incisors evoke an ‘I want to cuddle that’ feeling, but the bright, long yellow spines sticking out from under their brown fur in seemingly random patches arouse a ‘keep that thing away from me’ feeling.”
The Mexican hairy dwarf porcupine is even more adapted to life in the canopy than the North American porcupine. On land, its rather slow. But its prehensile, naked tail allows it to move through branches of Central American forests, where it feeds on seeds, leaves and fruits.