North American Porcupine
Erethizon dorsatum
The porcupine is a quill-bearing rodent (Order Rodentia) of the families Erethizontidae (New World) and Hystricidae (Old World).
North American Porcupine (Erethizon Dorsatum)
Can you name a mammal that will gnaw on axe handles and baseball bats?
North American Porcupine
Erethizon dorsatum
The North American Porcupine (Erethizon dorsatum) is a slow moving member of the rodent family. It is our 2nd largest rodent, only surpassed by the American Beaver in size in the United States.
North American Porcupine
The North American Porcupine is a well-protected, plant-eating rodent that spends much of its time in trees, looking for food. These slow-moving animals have sharp, needle-like quills protecting their body.
North American Porcupine (Erethizon dorsatum)
No photo of the North American Porcupine available.
North American Porcupine (Erethizon dorsatum),
Second largest: The North American porcupine (Erethizon dorsatum), also known as Canadian Porcupine, is a large rodent in the New World porcupine family.
North American Porcupines are large, slow-moving, tree-climbing rodents, protected from predators by their formidable quills. In winter, they eat the bark, phloem, and cambium of trees, particularly conifers.
North American Porcupine
(Erethizon dorsatum)
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The North American Porcupine is the second largest rodent in North America after the beaver. It has a distinctive spiny coat and moves in slow lumbering fashion.
North American Porcupine
Erethizon dorsatum
These slow-moving rodents are found in Minnesota's forest lands.
Their diets are comprised predominantly of snowshoe hares, North American porcupines (Erethizon dorsatum), small mammals, birds, carrion, and/or plants. Snowshoe hares are important prey throughout much of the fisher's range [40,108,130].
North American porcupines spend the day, singly or in groups, in rock cavities, hollow logs, or burrows. At night they forage in trees, feeding on leaves, buds and bark. They subsist in winter entirely on bark stripped from evergreens.
Like their New World equivalents, the North American porcupines, Old World porcupines are large, heavyset, slow-moving animals that rely on their imposing quills for defense rather than on speed or agility.
The North American porcupine is the only species that lives in the U.S. and Canada, and is the largest of all porcupines. A single animal may have 30,000 or more quills.
The North American porcupine lives in woodlands and forests throughout Alaska and the western half of the United States. You can also see porcupines in New England and the Northeast.
Erethizon dorsatum (North American Porcupine)
Glaucomys volans (Southern flying squirrel)
Hystrix cristata (Crested Porcupine)
Lemmus lemmus (Norway lemming)
Marmota marmota (Alpine Marmot) ...
SPECIES: Meet the North American Porcupine
TOP 10: Top Animal Fashion Disaster
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RODENTIA: Erethizontidae (New World Porcupines)
Common Name Scientific Name Distribution
North American Porcupine
Erethizon dorsatum ...
If cornered by a predator, porcupines aim their backsides toward the animal and sink raised quills into its skin. Accordingly, the scientific name of the North American porcupine, Erethizon dorsatum, ...
 See also: American Porcupine, Porcupine, Beaver, Coyote, Bear
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