Hedgehog’s Dilemma

Am I being mean?

Hugh Warwick Leave a comment

As part of Jaar van der Egel (the Year of the Hedgehog) in Holland, I was invited over to give a talk (and also enjoy a few days of delightful peace in the flat of my friend Mina … there is a restaurant selling rotis that supply a mouth tingly, stomach distending heaven just a short walk from her one-time squat in an exclusive neighbourhood).

So, the talk  – and also the Year of the Hedgehog, I might as well contribute something about that event. But first the talk and my concern about potential meanness. I like to think that I am quite sensitive to the impact I have on people – if I have offended anyone, I really hope it is because I intended to do so … but after my very favourite ‘performance’ … my talks sometimes become a little more than just a lecture – and this one was great as they gave me over 90 minutes to talk, and I kept people happy, laughing (with, not at, I hope) and in their seats ’til the end.

But, as I met many people coming to chat to me on the way out, one man came up to me with obvious agitation. I had offended his wife – an American – and the cause of offence was my references to my time in America at the Rocky Mountain Hedgehog Show.

Now, there may be a few of you who have not yet read my book, A Prickly Affair, but just in case, here is a brief synopsis of a surreal few days:

I was invited by the wonderful people of the Hedgehog Welfare Society and the International Hedgehog Association to give a presentation at the biennial hedgehog show in Denver, Colorado about the campaign I had been involved in to stop the cull of hedgehogs in the Uists.

The hedgehog show is very like Crufts, with some obvious differences. And essentially, the cutest hedgehog wins. Now these are African pygmy hedgehogs (usually a mix of Atelerix albiventris and Atelerix frontalis) – not our western European hedgehogs (Erinaceus europaeus) – our hedgehogs are totally, completely and utterly NOT appropriate as pets. In fact I would argue that neither are the Pygmy hogs (which, interestingly, are about the same size as most of the other 14 species of hedgehog … apart from the lardy-butts among the hedgehogs, ours!) … however, in the USA there is a body of people who are obsessed with their pet hedgehogs. I wrote a rant for the Guardian about this.

Where was I … ok, the show – after I had done my talk and witnessed the winning hedgehog be presented with a rosette many times its size, I was asked if I was staying for the International Hedgehog Olympic Games … now you know how sometimes you will (well, at least I will) say things that are obviously not true, as a joke …. well, I was wrong – utterly serious the IHOG.

In fact I will post something just about the IHOG because it it worth the attention.

There was so much stuff that I found strange – the animal communicator, Dawn Wrobel, who claims to be able to speak to not just hedgehogs but also the ghosts of hedgehogs past … in fact I heard her telling a couple that she had been told by their current pet hedgehog that the reason it was so disturbed was because the ghost of their cat used to sit beside its cage and complain that it had been so jealous of the attention the previous hedgehog had received.

I did a little research about animal communication and am as yet unconvinced by its efficacy … and alarmed at the costs of courses. However, I believe there are some people who are able to empathise better with non-human animals – and wonder if this is the beginning of the slippery slope to a belief in animal communication.

Back at the talk, I also talked about the Rainbow Bridge ceremony … and the valedictory to all the pet hedgehogs that had died in the previous two years. I caused guffaws of laughter with talk about the fund-raising extremes of some of the maggot-eating pet owners … all in all, we had fun.

But the offence? I think, and hope, it was due to a mis-understanding. At no point had I said, or meant to say, that this was all the madness of Americans – more that it was a delightful madness of a few specific people, as part of the a particular community. There is a risk when telling a story that the impression comes of a broader generalisation than is intended. And I am now going to make sure that the only times I cause offence are when I really mean to cause offence!

Save the hedgehog; save the world: Why the hedgehog is the most important species on the planet.

Hugh Warwick Leave a comment

What an animal the hedgehog is. Not only the source of 2009’s joke of the year at the Edinburgh Fringe from Dan Antopolski: Hedgehogs, why can’t they just share the hedge? But also credited with being the most important species on the planet. By me.

Okay, I know this is a bold claim and there are others who might argue for worms, bees, plankton or people. But I believe that the hedgehog is up there among those more obvious candidates. And that is not just because I have been studying the animal, off and on, for the last twenty years. Or because one night I fell in love with a hedgehog called Nigel.

Actually before I explain that – there is something else the hedgehog has to offer, thanks to the arch-pessimist, Schopenhauer. He described the Hedgehog’s Dilemma, a metaphor for relationships between people. Two hedgehogs are in love, but when they get too close to each other, they hurt themselves with prickles – so they back off and get to a point where they are too far apart and suffer from the pain of loneliness.

While many of us may suffer from this in our personal lives, I believe that we are all suffering from a Hedgehog’s Dilemma on a much bigger scale. Our dilemma is with the natural world. When we get too close to ‘out there’, if we were all, for example, to move into the wilds, we would simply destroy what we were seeking.

But we are also removing ourselves from contact with the natural world. Now, for the first time, we are a majority urban species; there are more and more people who have little or no contact with nature. This leaves us bereft – and a growing body of work is beginning to reveal the consequences to our physical and mental well-being.

E.O. Wilson from Harvard started this field of work with the creation of a new word – biophilia – a recognition of the fact that we have an innate need to be in touch with nature. More recently this has been wonderfully explored by Richard Louv in his book Last Child in the Woods – Saving our children from Nature-Deficit Disorder. Now as soon as I heard that term, nature-deficit disorder, I knew that it was vital. It perfectly captures the consequences of our bereavement from nature and our failure to solve the hedgehog’s dilemma.

So where is the relationship between this philosophising and the importance of the hedgehog? And where does Nigel come into it all?

Okay, first to Nigel. I had been radio-tracking hedgehogs in Devon and at around four in the morning, as I went to clean my teeth outside the damp and cold caravan I was living in, I noticed one of my animals just sitting there. It was Nigel. I decided to follow him, no electronics, just us. Over the next hour I got closer and closer until there came a point where I was lying on my stomach and we were nose-to-nose. And then he looked at me. Up until then, I had been observing, he had been snuffling and getting on with the business of being a hedgehog. But at that moment, he stopped and looked up at me. The importance of this; there is no other wild animal that we can do this with. You can get nose-to-nose with your pets, but all the other wild animals I have had anything to do with just would not allow this sort of intimacy.

With that sort of intimacy there is a far greater chance of falling in love with the natural world. Love alters behaviour. And we need to alter our behaviour if we are to have any chance of averting catastrophe.

So perhaps the biggest challenge faced by the large wildlife and conservation organisations is in getting people to truly fall in love with the natural world.

How do we encourage people to fall in love with the natural world? It is a bit of a big thing to tackle on its own. So conservation and wildlife charities focus on the charismatic mega fauna to try and seduce us.

Whales, tigers, lions and elephants are the poster-children of their movement. Which is great, up to a point. The risk is that this generates a very superficial, almost sentimental, reaction. I suppose it is a bit like relying on images of supermodels to instruct our understanding of human relationships. It works okay for hormone-ravaged adolescents, but is less effective, and in fact downright destructive, when it comes to more mature considerations of our loves and ourselves.

I reckon I am about as likely to get nose-to-nose with a humpbacked whale as I am with, say, Angelina Jolie. And even if I did get that close, would there be a spark, a bond? We are much more likely to fall in love with the girl or boy next door. And the hedgehog is the animal equivalent of the boy or girl next door.

Getting moved and becoming passionate are key to us all becoming more involved in creating the change we want to see, and in fact becoming the change we want to see, to steal a line from Gandhi.

We can love a hedgehog like no other animal. It is the first and probably only wild animal that we urbanites and suburbanites have a chance of getting really close to. The hedgehog chooses to share the same space as us and if we are willing to change our point of view and get down on its level, we will be rewarded by the opening of a door into a deeper understanding of the natural world. Once the connection has been made, once we have had that chance to do the nose-to-nose thing and see the spark of wild in its eye, then we can follow it through into a new world view.

Hugh Warwick