Prehensile-tailed porcupine
Porcupine ( Coendou prehensilis )
The porcupine ( Coendou ) are an arboreal species porcupine related rodents in Latin America. The tail is formed as a prehensile tail. Unlike other mammals with prehensile tail of the porcupine rolls his tail facing up. Front and rear extremities are converted into gripping members, which facilitates climbing. The whole body of adult animals is covered with thorn-like spines, only the prehensile tail bears no.
Dissemination
Home are the forests of southern Mexico, Central America and South America.
Way of life
Although the porcupine climb slowly, but by their five full gripping members very safe in the trees around. Their diet consists of leaves, buds, fruits, bark and roots of trees. They are nocturnal loner. Among themselves they are quite aggressive. The females usually only bring a young one, sometimes twins. The boy is at birth already very large, the spines still very soft and pliable. Porcupine reach a head -body length of 30-60 cm and a tail length of 33-45 cm. The life expectancy of the porcupine is about 27 years.
Threat
Your warning cries remind toddlers calls. Adult porcupine have because of their spines no specific natural predators, but multiple threats made by the bird of prey Harpie ( Harpia harpyja ), Jaguar (Panther onca ), puma ( Puma concolor), ocelot ( Leopardus pardalis), snakes, and on the ground, for example, by the bulge crocodile ( Crocodylus moreletii ). The main threat comes from the people.
Contact with people
Porcupine can occur as serious pests for forestry or agricultural plantations. In captivity, porcupine are their carers to very tame.
Species
According Integrated Taxonomic Information System ( ITIS) four species of porcupine are known:
- Coendou bicolor ( Tschudi, 1844) - South American porcupine
- Coendou nycthemera ( Olfers, 1818)
- Coendou prehensilis (Linnaeus, 1758), the actual porcupine or Cuandu, is the most famous of this genre. It reaches a head-body length of about 65 cm and a tail length of about 45 cm. The boy already has a length which corresponds to approximately one third of the mother at birth.
- Coendou Rothschildi Thomas, 1902, endemic to Panama.
- In May 2013 Coendou speratus was described as relatively small with a long tail and three colored spines in the forests of the Northeast Atlantic coast of Brazil, in December 2013 followed Coendou baturitensis from the mountains of the Brazilian state of Ceará Baturité.
Many of the associated in zoological works of the genus of porcupine animals were actually identified as a South American porcupine ( Sphiggurus ). Porcupine these are very close and form with them and other genera, the family of porcupines ( Erethizontidae ).