Hedgehog Trivia
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50 free Hedgehog trivia questions with answers — nature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
49 free Hedgehog trivia questions with answers. Hedgehogs top Britain's favourite-animal polls, star in Beatrix Potter books and a Sega franchise, and even lend their name to a gene that shapes your fingers. This hedgehog trivia quiz covers all of it: the biology (what the spines are made of, how cold a hibernating hedgehog gets, why they froth at the mouth and lick their own backs), the 17 wild species from the Sahara to Siberia, pet African pygmy hedgehogs, and the folklore that stretches from Pliny the Elder to Groundhog Day. The set runs from easy questions a child could answer (what is a baby hedgehog called?) to expert ones about anti-submarine weapons, Schopenhauer and Soviet animation. It suits a family quiz night, a classroom nature unit or anyone who has just adopted a hedgehog and wants to know more. Every answer was checked against a primary or encyclopaedic source before publishing, and each question carries a citation, so you can trust what you learn here.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01A hedgehog's spines are hollow hairs stiffened with which protein?
Keratin
Keratin, the same protein that forms human hair and fingernails, stiffens the hollow spines; unlike porcupine quills, hedgehog spines are not barbed and do not detach easily.
Q 02Which of a hedgehog's senses is its weakest?
Sight
Sight: a hedgehog sees poorly and finds its food mainly by smell and hearing, which suits an animal that does its foraging after dark.
Q 03Which continent has no native hedgehogs at all?
Australia
Australia has no native hedgehogs, and neither do the Americas today, although an extinct hedgehog genus once lived in North America.
Q 04Each autumn, British wildlife charities ask people to check what for sleeping hedgehogs before lighting it?
A bonfire
A bonfire: a heap of logs and leaves is just what a hedgehog picks for its winter nest, so the RSPCA and the British Hedgehog Preservation Society both ask people to check before lighting.
Q 05What is a baby hedgehog called?
Hoglet
A hoglet: litters of around four or five are born blind and deaf in a nest of leaves, and the young begin foraging with their mother at about three to four weeks old.
Q 06When a hedgehog meets a strong new smell it chews the source and spreads what over its spines?
Frothy saliva
Frothy saliva: the hedgehog chews the new scent into a foam and spreads it over its spines, a ritual called self-anointing whose purpose is still debated.
Q 07In hibernation, a hedgehog's body temperature falls from about 35 °C to roughly what level?
Just above freezing
Just above freezing: the body can cool to between 2 and 5 °C, yet most hibernating hedgehogs still wake at least once in the winter and move to a new nest.
Q 08Hedgehogs share distant ancestry with which small mammals?
Shrews
Shrews: hedgehogs and shrews sit together in the order Eulipotyphla, whereas porcupines are rodents that only look similar.
Q 09How do gymnures, the hedgehog's closest relatives, differ from hedgehogs?
Ordinary fur, no spines
Gymnures, also called hairy hedgehogs, have ordinary fur, no spines; they mark their territory with scent glands whose smell is likened to rancid onion or garlic.
Q 10Which old English word for hedgehog survives today as the name of a spiny sea creature?
Urchin
Sea urchins were once called sea hedgehogs. Hedgepig is another old name for the animal.
Q 11Which Shakespeare tragedy includes the line 'Thrice and once the hedge-pig whined'?
Macbeth
Macbeth: the Second Witch says it as the three gather at their cauldron, the hedgehog's cry being one of the signals that the time has come to start the charm.
Q 12How are a newborn hedgehog's quills arranged at birth so that the mother is not injured?
Hidden beneath the skin
Hidden beneath the skin: a membrane covers the newborn's spines, then dries and shrinks within hours so that they push through; this first coat is later shed, which is called quilling.
Q 13A protein called erinacin gives hedgehogs some natural immunity to what?
Snake venom
Q 21The British Hedgehog Preservation Society set up Hedgehog Street in 2011 with which other charity?
People's Trust for Endangered Species
People's Trust for Endangered Species runs Hedgehog Street jointly with the BHPS, asking volunteers to make their own gardens friendlier to hedgehogs and then to recruit their neighbours.
Q 22What job does Beatrix Potter's hedgehog Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle do?
Washerwoman
Washerwoman: Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle launders and irons the clothes of the local animals; the 1905 tale drew on Potter's pet hedgehog and Kitty MacDonald, a Scottish washerwoman, and Frederick Ashton danced the role in 1971.
Q 23The Tale of Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle is set in which part of England?
Snake venom: erinacin in the hedgehog's muscles blocks the bleeding that viper venom causes, but there is so little of it that a viper's bite can still kill.
Q 14In which US state is it illegal to keep a hedgehog as a pet?
California
California bans pet hedgehogs, and as of 2019 so did Georgia, Hawaii and Pennsylvania; such rules may stem from fears that some species can carry foot-and-mouth disease.
Q 15The African pygmy hedgehog, the usual pet species, is also known by what name describing its hind feet?
Four-toed
Four-toed hedgehog: unlike its relatives it usually lacks the hallux, or big toe, on each hind foot, though some animals keep a small bony lump where the toe would be.
Q 16To which country did colonists carry hedgehogs from Britain in the 1860s-90s, where they are now pests?
New Zealand
New Zealand: colonists shipped hedgehogs out as pets and to eat farm pests, and with no natural predators there they now prey on native insects, lizards and ground-nesting birds.
Q 17Which animal is the main predator of hedgehogs in Britain?
Badger
The badger: hedgehog numbers are lower wherever badgers are plentiful, and some rescue centres will not release a hedgehog into known badger territory.
Q 18Which fast-food dessert's UK lid was redesigned in 2006 after hedgehogs got their heads stuck?
McDonald's McFlurry
McDonald's McFlurry: hedgehogs after the leftover ice cream were getting stuck in discarded cups, and after an outcry the company shrank the opening in the lid in 2006.
Q 19British wildlife charities warn against leaving out which traditional treat for garden hedgehogs?
Milk
Milk: hedgehogs are lactose intolerant, so the old saucer of bread and milk upsets their digestion; the RSPCA suggests meaty cat or dog food and fresh water instead.
Q 20What do British conservationists call a 13-centimetre square hole cut in a garden fence for wildlife?
A hedgehog highway
A hedgehog highway: a hole 13 cm square lets a hedgehog through but is too small for nearly all pets, and it matters because the animals roam a mile or two every night.
The Lake District
The Lake District: the Newlands Valley and its fells supplied the backgrounds, and the little girl Lucie was modelled on Lucie Carr, a child Potter knew there.
Q 24Sonic the Hedgehog was created in 1991 as a mascot to rival which other video game character?
Mario
Mario: Sonic's makers wanted a flagship character to take on Nintendo's plumber, so his first game, released in June 1991, was built around sheer speed.
Q 25Sonic the Hedgehog's signature colour was chosen to match what?
Sega's logo
Sega's logo: Sonic's fur copies the company's cobalt blue, while his shoes grew out of a design inspired by Santa Claus and Michael Jackson.
Q 26Who voiced Sonic in the 2020 live-action Sonic the Hedgehog film and its sequels?
Ben Schwartz
Ben Schwartz voiced Sonic in the 2020 film and its sequels; the release was put back three months so that the character could be redesigned to look more like the game's hero.
Q 27The 'hedgehog' gene, whose mutants sprout spiky bristles, was first discovered in which organism?
Fruit fly
Fruit fly: Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard and Eric Wieschaus found hedgehog in 1980 while screening Drosophila for genes that pattern the body; mutant larvae were covered in bristles, and the pair shared the 1995 Nobel Prize.
Q 28Besides Sonic, mammals' other two hedgehog genes are named after which kinds of hedgehog?
Desert and Indian
Desert and Indian hedgehog: the lab's plan was to name each new gene after a real species, until postdoc Robert Riddle rebelled and called his find Sonic, after the video-game character.
Q 29Without the Sonic hedgehog protein, an embryo can at worst develop what?
A single central eye
A single central eye: the condition, cyclopia, also struck Idaho lambs in the 1950s whose mothers had grazed on corn lily, a plant whose toxin blocks the hedgehog signal.
Q 30Which philosopher devised the 'hedgehog's dilemma' of hedgehogs huddling for warmth?
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer told the parable in 1851: the animals crowd together for warmth, prick one another and settle at a middle distance. In his telling they were porcupines.