Inside the mouth of a Hedgehog

Recently I had been getting a bit concerned about the activity in the hedgehog feeding station. The food was certainly getting eaten but the trail cameras where not picking up many hedgehogs entering or leaving. I know that the trail cameras are not alwaya reliable but I thought that perhaps the food may be being taken by mice or other rodents.

To reassure myself that all was well I set up a camera inside the feed station and although the image quality is poor all did seem to be in order.

Witness hedgehog eating food.

However the next video was much more interesting.

The hedgehog was obviously quite intrigued by the camera to the point of putting it in it’s mouth and giving us an extreme close-up inside.

I’ve been doing my research and hedgehogs have similar teeth to humans, molars, pre-molars, canines and incisors. I’ve also learnt that they have 44 teeth, obviously not all visible in the above where we can mainly see the canines. These look sharp enough but it’s also worth taking a look at the front incisors.

The full set looks pretty fierce for the very good reasons that they need to be to support the Hedgehogs diet. A great example is given by the eaten out snail shells that I’m finding all over the garden at this time.

The Hedgehog will have used it’s front incisors to get through the shell, it looks quite neat job in this case, before using it’s canines and other teeth to chew and eat the snail meats.

I can’t Imagine getting any closer Images of hedgehog teeth but for all the up to date news on the garden activity don’t forget to check out the Chatou Nature Website.