The Madras hedgehog, found only in southern India, is considered a species of least concern on the IUCN Red List of threatened species. However, this elusive spiny species is poorly understood, and its population is largely unknown, reports Mongabay India’s Arathi Menon.
India’s arid grasslands, scrublands and deserts are home to three species of hedgehogs. Two of them — the Indian hedgehog (Paraechinus micropus) and the Indian long-eared or collared hedgehog (Hemiechinus collaris) — occur in the country’s northwestern states, as well as in Pakistan.
The bare-bellied hedgehog, also known as the Madras hedgehog or South Indian hedgehog (Paraechinus nudiventris), has only ever been reported in the five states of southern India.
In a 2024 study, hedgehog researcher Brawin Kumar and his colleagues noted that the Madras hedgehog has been barely studied in the states of Kerala, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh, preventing “a comprehensive population assessment of hedgehog species in these regions.”
Most sightings of the species have come from the state of Tamil Nadu, including a recent study that reported individuals from three grasslands in the state where they’d previously not been seen.
These three sites “are some of India’s southernmost grasslands and represent the final remnants of tropical grasslands across Asia,” the study notes.
R. Sankaranarayanan, a researcher at the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE), who led the study, told Mongabay India that Madras hedgehogs “rely on open natural ecosystems that are rapidly being converted into agricultural lands, for agroforestry practices as well as developmental projects.”
The hedgehogs are also widely hunted because of superstitious beliefs, without any scientific basis, that they have medicinal properties. Tick and parasite infestations are another big threat, Kumar told Mongabay India.
“As these external parasites feed on hedgehogs’ blood, they cause blood loss, anemia, and transmit diseases like tick-borne relapsing fever,” Kumar said. “This can weaken hedgehogs’ immune systems, making them more vulnerable to other infections and reducing their reproductive success. Severe infestations can lead to nutritional deficiencies, alter their behavior, and even increase mortality rates, ultimately contributing to declining populations.”
In their 2024 paper, Kumar and colleagues wrote that the Madras hedgehog is severely data-deficient, but has been classified as a species of least concern on the IUCN Red List “due to its apparent abundance within its small distribution,” and the belief that its habitat isn’t likely to decline quickly.
In 2021, Kumar and his colleagues sent out a conservation action plan for the species to forest officials in Tamil Nadu. The plan includes recommendations for more research to estimate the Madras hedgehog’s population, understand its threats, and the creation of a hedgehog conservation breeding program, Menon writes.
This is a summary of “Bare-bellied and barely seen, Madras hedgehog needs a headcount” by Arathi Menon for Mongabay India.
Banner image of a Madras hedgehog by Santhosh Krishnan13 via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).
This story first appeared on Mongabay
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