Hedgehogs in culture
Encyclopedia
Europe
As animals native to Europe, hedgehogHedgehog
A hedgehog is any of the spiny mammals of the subfamily Erinaceinae and the order Erinaceomorpha. There are 17 species of hedgehog in five genera, found through parts of Europe, Asia, Africa, and New Zealand . There are no hedgehogs native to Australia, and no living species native to the Americas...
s hold a rightful place in European folklore
Folklore
Folklore consists of legends, music, oral history, proverbs, jokes, popular beliefs, fairy tales and customs that are the traditions of a culture, subculture, or group. It is also the set of practices through which those expressive genres are shared. The study of folklore is sometimes called...
. Since the mammal did not possess any "righteous" qualities, it never made it to the court art; however, its relationship with fairy tales has been a long and fruitful one.
In most European countries, hedgehogs are believed to be a hard-working no-nonsense animal. This partially results from the folk belief that hedgehogs collect apples and mushrooms and carry them to their secret storage. It is unclear exactly how old this belief is, though the Roman
Ancient Rome
Ancient Rome was a thriving civilization that grew on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 8th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea and centered on the city of Rome, it expanded to one of the largest empires in the ancient world....
author Pliny the Elder
Pliny the Elder
Gaius Plinius Secundus , better known as Pliny the Elder, was a Roman author, naturalist, and natural philosopher, as well as naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, and personal friend of the emperor Vespasian...
mentions hedgehogs gathering grapes by this method in his Naturalis Historia
Naturalis Historia
The Natural History is an encyclopedia published circa AD 77–79 by Pliny the Elder. It is one of the largest single works to have survived from the Roman Empire to the modern day and purports to cover the entire field of ancient knowledge, based on the best authorities available to Pliny...
. In medieval bestiaries and other illuminated manuscripts dating from at least the 13th century onwards, hedgehogs are shown rolling on and impaling fruit to carry back to their dens. In fact, however, hedgehogs do not gather food to store for later consumption, relying on their deposited fat to survive hibernation
Hibernation
Hibernation is a state of inactivity and metabolic depression in animals, characterized by lower body temperature, slower breathing, and lower metabolic rate. Hibernating animals conserve food, especially during winter when food supplies are limited, tapping energy reserves, body fat, at a slow rate...
. Nor is apple included in their usual diet (it has been suggested, however, that the hedgehogs may use juice of wild apples in order to get rid of parasites, similar to anting
Anting (bird activity)
In the behavior called anting, birds rub insects on their feathers, usually ants, which secrete liquids containing chemicals such as formic acid, that can act as an insecticide, miticide, fungicide, bactericide, or to make them edible by removing the distasteful acid. It possibly also supplements...
). The image remains an irresistible one to modern illustrators. Therefore, hedgehogs are often portrayed carrying apples - partially, to make them look cuter.
Hedgehogs are often pictured as fond of milk, while in reality, they are lactose-intolerant.
They are also often seen in pictures with an autumn-themed background, since the animal hibernates
Hibernation
Hibernation is a state of inactivity and metabolic depression in animals, characterized by lower body temperature, slower breathing, and lower metabolic rate. Hibernating animals conserve food, especially during winter when food supplies are limited, tapping energy reserves, body fat, at a slow rate...
in piles of leaves. This also adds to the cute reputation of hedgehogs. In Great Britain
Great Britain
Great Britain or Britain is an island situated to the northwest of Continental Europe. It is the ninth largest island in the world, and the largest European island, as well as the largest of the British Isles...
, however, the human habit of lighting bonfires to celebrate Bonfire Night
Guy Fawkes Night
Guy Fawkes Night, also known as Guy Fawkes Day, Bonfire Night and Firework Night, is an annual commemoration observed on 5 November, primarily in England. Its history begins with the events of 5 November 1605, when Guy Fawkes, a member of the Gunpowder Plot, was arrested while guarding...
on November 5 has led to an increased risk to hedgehogs, who often choose to sleep in the piles of wood accumulated in gardens and parks beforehand. Television messages now remind viewers who might be lighting bonfires to check them first for the presence of hibernating hedgehogs.
During the 1970s and 1980s, hedgehogs were one of the poster animals for environment activists through Europe. A lot of hedgehogs were killed by traffic, and since the hedgehog already had an aura of a cute little friendly animal, the choice was nearly perfect.
United States
The common AmericanUnited States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
holiday Groundhog Day
Groundhog Day
Groundhog Day is a holiday celebrated on February 2 in the United States and Canada. According to folklore, if it is cloudy when a groundhog emerges from its burrow on this day, it will leave the burrow, signifying that winter-like weather will soon end...
originated in Ancient Rome
Ancient Rome
Ancient Rome was a thriving civilization that grew on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 8th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea and centered on the city of Rome, it expanded to one of the largest empires in the ancient world....
as Hedgehog Day and is still celebrated as such through much of the world. There are no native hedgehogs in the United States, so the early settlers chose the groundhog
Groundhog
The groundhog , also known as a woodchuck, whistle-pig, or in some areas as a land-beaver, is a rodent of the family Sciuridae, belonging to the group of large ground squirrels known as marmots. Other marmots, such as the yellow-bellied and hoary marmots, live in rocky and mountainous areas, but...
as a substitute.
Hedgehogs remain largely unseen in modern day American culture. On a number of occasions British educational programs have been revoiced to refer to hedgehogs as porcupine
Porcupine
Porcupines are rodents with a coat of sharp spines, or quills, that defend or camouflage them from predators. They are indigenous to the Americas, southern Asia, and Africa. Porcupines are the third largest of the rodents, behind the capybara and the beaver. Most porcupines are about long, with...
s (at least one of such examples being Bob the Builder
Bob the Builder
Bob the Builder is a British children's animated television show created by Keith Chapman. In the original series Bob appears as a building contractor specialising in masonry in a stop motion animated programme with his colleague Wendy, various neighbours and friends, and their gang of...
). The Wacky Wheels
Wacky Wheels
Wacky Wheels is an MS-DOS arcade kart racing video game released by Apogee Software in 1994, with the emphasis on fun over realism both in looks and gameplay...
video game makes humorous use of hedgehogs as projectiles, and they are also seen reading the newspaper while sitting on the toilet in the middle of the race course.
One notable exception is Sonic the Hedgehog
Sonic the Hedgehog (character)
, trademarked Sonic The Hedgehog, is a video game character and the main protagonist of the Sonic video game series released by Sega, as well as in numerous spin-off comics, cartoons, and a feature film. The first game was released on June 23, 1991, to provide Sega with a mascot to rival Nintendo's...
.
May has been designated Hedgehog month by the International Hedgehog Association.
Oceania
New ZealandNew Zealand
New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...
's McGillicuddy Serious Party
McGillicuddy Serious Party
The McGillicuddy Serious Party operated as a satirical political party in New Zealand politics during the late 20th century. Between 1984 and 1999, McGillicuddy Serious provided "colour" to New Zealand politics to ensure that citizens not take the political process too seriously...
were unsuccessful in their attempt to get a hedgehog elected to Parliament.
Also in New Zealand, hedgehogs feature in the Bogor cartoon by Burton Silver
Burton Silver
Burton Silver is a cartoonist, parodist, writer, art critic and inventor. He lives in Wellington, New Zealand.Silver was born in Wellington and attended Wellington College, later completing a B.A. at Victoria University of Wellington. He worked initially as a boilermaker's assistant on Groote...
, via which they also appeared on a postage stamp.
Technology
A hedgehog transformer is an early type of electrical transformer designed to work at audio frequencies (AF). They resemble hedgehogs in size, color and shape, and were used in the first part of the 20th Century. (See http://www.telephonecollecting.org/hedgehog.html)Cuisine
Supermarket
A supermarket, a form of grocery store, is a self-service store offering a wide variety of food and household merchandise, organized into departments...
s in the UK, a type of speciality loaf
Loaf
A loaf is a shape, usually rounded or oblong, mass of food. It may refer to a bread, or meatloaf.The term "loaf" sometimes refers to "head" from the rhyming slang "loaf of bread" ....
named Hedgehog Bread can be found for sale. The loaf has a hard top crust shaped before baking into a series of small spikes, resembling a hedgehog.
"Hedgehogs" may also be created by moulding ground meat in a teardrop shape, embedding pastry slivers or slivered almonds in the surface to resemble quills, and adding eyes and ears of peppercorns, olives, or whole almonds. The technique dates back to at least 1390, and was referenced in an episode of Two Fat Ladies
Two Fat Ladies
Two Fat Ladies was a BBC Two television cooking programme starring Clarissa Dickson Wright and Jennifer Paterson. It originally ran for four seasons, from 1996 to 1999. The show was produced by the BBC and also appeared on the Food Network in the U.S. and on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation...
.
In books
- Hans My HedgehogHans My HedgehogHans My Hedgehog, or Hans the Hedgehog, is a Brothers Grimm fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm. Since the second edition published in 1819, it has been recorded as Tale no...
is a German fairy tale collected by the Brothers GrimmBrothers GrimmThe Brothers Grimm , Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm , were German academics, linguists, cultural researchers, and authors who collected folklore and published several collections of it as Grimm's Fairy Tales, which became very popular...
. A wealthy but childless merchant wishes he had a child, even a hedgehog, and comes home to find that his wife has given birth to a baby boy that is a hedgehog from the waist up. After many trials Hans My Hedgehog marries a princess and becomes a handsome young man.
- The French author the Comtesse de Ségur devotes a chapter in the children's classic Les petites filles modèles (in French) to a story featuring hedgehogs. A mother hedgehog and her three offspring are killed by a caretaker because, as he explains it, they destroy little rabbits and partridges, to the great consternation of the children in the story.
- In Alice's Adventures In WonderlandAlice's Adventures in WonderlandAlice's Adventures in Wonderland is an 1865 novel written by English author Charles Lutwidge Dodgson under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll. It tells of a girl named Alice who falls down a rabbit hole into a fantasy world populated by peculiar, anthropomorphic creatures...
, the Queen of HeartsQueen of Hearts (Alice's Adventures in Wonderland)The Queen of Hearts is a character from the book Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by the writer and mathematician Lewis Carroll. She is a foul-tempered monarch, that Carroll himself pictured as "a blind fury", and who is quick to decree death sentences at the slightest offense...
uses hedgehogs and flamingos to play croquetCroquetCroquet is a lawn game, played both as a recreational pastime and as a competitive sport. It involves hitting plastic or wooden balls with a mallet through hoops embedded into the grass playing court.-History:...
.
- Beatrix PotterBeatrix PotterHelen Beatrix Potter was an English author, illustrator, natural scientist and conservationist best known for her imaginative children’s books featuring animals such as those in The Tale of Peter Rabbit which celebrated the British landscape and country life.Born into a privileged Unitarian...
's Mrs. Tiggy-WinkleThe Tale of Mrs. Tiggy-WinkleThe Tale of Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle is a children's book written and illustrated by Beatrix Potter. It was published by Frederick Warne & Co. in October 1905. Mrs. Tiggy-winkle is a hedgehog and a washerwoman who lives in a tiny cottage in the fells of the Lake District. A child named Lucie happens upon...
stars a hedgehog.
- Two hedgehogs of school-child age feature in Kenneth GrahameKenneth GrahameKenneth Grahame was a Scottish writer, most famous for The Wind in the Willows , one of the classics of children's literature. He also wrote The Reluctant Dragon; both books were later adapted into Disney films....
's The Wind in the WillowsThe Wind in the WillowsThe Wind in the Willows is a classic of children's literature by Kenneth Grahame, first published in 1908. Alternately slow moving and fast paced, it focuses on four anthropomorphised animal characters in a pastoral version of England...
.
- British author Terry PratchettTerry PratchettSir Terence David John "Terry" Pratchett, OBE is an English novelist, known for his frequently comical work in the fantasy genre. He is best known for his popular and long-running Discworld series of comic fantasy novels...
incorporates hedgehogs into several of his DiscworldDiscworldDiscworld is a comic fantasy book series by English author Sir Terry Pratchett, set on the Discworld, a flat world balanced on the backs of four elephants which, in turn, stand on the back of a giant turtle, Great A'Tuin. The books frequently parody, or at least take inspiration from, J. R. R....
novels, and one of the characters is known for singing a lewd song called "The Hedgehog Can Never Be Buggered At AllNanny OggGytha Ogg is a character from Terry Pratchett's Discworld series. She is a witch and member of the Lancre coven.- Personality :The character of Nanny Ogg is based on the Mother stereotype of the Triple Goddess myth...
".
- Jan BrettJan BrettJan Brett is a best-selling American author/illustrator of childrens' books. Her books are known for colorful, detailed depictions of a wide variety of animals and human cultures ranging from Scandinavia to Africa...
has featured a hedgehog as the main character in many of her books, including The Mitten and Hedgie's Surprise.
- Hedgehogs are common characters in Brian Jacques'sBrian JacquesJames Brian Jacques was an English author best known for his Redwall series of novels and Castaways of the Flying Dutchman series. He also completed two collections of short stories entitled The Ribbajack & Other Curious Yarns and Seven Strange and Ghostly Tales.-Biography:Brian Jacques was born...
book series, RedwallRedwallRedwall, by Brian Jacques, is a series of fantasy novels. It is the title of the first book of the series, published in 1986, the name of the Abbey featured in the book, and the name of an animated TV series based on three of the novels , which first aired in 1999...
.
- Dick King-SmithDick King-SmithRonald Gordon King-Smith OBE, Hon.M.Ed. , better known by his pen name Dick King-Smith, was a prolific English children's author, best known for writing The Sheep-Pig, retitled in the United States as Babe the Gallant Pig, on which the movie Babe was based...
has written a story for younger children about a family of hedgehogs threatened by traffic, The Hodgeheg.
- In The Animals of Farthing WoodThe Animals of Farthing Wood (book series)The Animals of Farthing Wood is a series of eight books written by British author Colin Dann. The books tell the story of a group of woodland animals whose home has been paved over by developers. They learn of a nature reserve, White Deer Park, where they will be safe, and undertake to make the...
by British author Colin DannColin DannColin Dann is an English author. He is best known for his The Animals of Farthing Wood series of books, which was subsequently made into an animated series....
, several hedgehogs were part of the group of animals that travelled from Farthing Wood to the nature reserve White Deer Park. The oldest two hedgehogs were run over on a motorway near the end of the journey. The rest of the hedgehogs safely made it to White Deer Park and appeared sporadically in the remainder of the series. In the television adaptation only two hedgehogs were part of the group. As in the novel, both were killed on the motorway.
- Isaiah BerlinIsaiah BerlinSir Isaiah Berlin OM, FBA was a British social and political theorist, philosopher and historian of ideas of Russian-Jewish origin, regarded as one of the leading thinkers of the twentieth century and a dominant liberal scholar of his generation...
, in The Hedgehog and the FoxThe Hedgehog and the Fox"The Hedgehog and the Fox" is an essay by the liberal philosopher Isaiah Berlin. It was one of Berlin's most popular essays with the general public. Berlin himself said of the essay: "I never meant it very seriously. I meant it as a kind of enjoyable intellectual game, but it was taken seriously...
, takes the hedgehog as the type of the person who knows "one big thing", as opposed to the fox, who knows many things. This was taken from a poem by ArchilochusArchilochusArchilochus, or, Archilochos While these have been the generally accepted dates since Felix Jacoby, "The Date of Archilochus," Classical Quarterly 35 97-109, some scholars disagree; Robin Lane Fox, for instance, in Travelling Heroes: Greeks and Their Myths in the Epic Age of Homer , p...
.
- Similarly, Stephen Jay GouldStephen Jay GouldStephen Jay Gould was an American paleontologist, evolutionary biologist, and historian of science. He was also one of the most influential and widely read writers of popular science of his generation....
refers to a persistent in sticking to one strategy, "hedgehog-like" behavior in his discourse on the humanitiesHumanitiesThe humanities are academic disciplines that study the human condition, using methods that are primarily analytical, critical, or speculative, as distinguished from the mainly empirical approaches of the natural sciences....
versus scienceScienceScience is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe...
in The Hedgehog, the Fox, and the Magister's PoxThe Hedgehog, the Fox, and the Magister's PoxThe Hedgehog, the Fox, and the Magister's Pox is Stephen Jay Gould's posthumous volume exploring the historically complex relationship between the sciences and the humanities in a scholarly discourse....
.
- In Rudyard KiplingRudyard KiplingJoseph Rudyard Kipling was an English poet, short-story writer, and novelist chiefly remembered for his celebration of British imperialism, tales and poems of British soldiers in India, and his tales for children. Kipling received the 1907 Nobel Prize for Literature...
's Just So StoriesJust So StoriesThe Just So Stories for Little Children were written by British author Rudyard Kipling. They are highly fantasised origin stories and are among Kipling's best known works.-Description:...
a Hedgehog named Stickly-Prickly is one of the main protagonists in the story "The Beginning of the Armadillos".
- Fuzzypeg, a friend of Little Grey RabbitLittle Grey RabbitLittle Grey Rabbit is the lead character in an English classic series of children's books, written by Alison Uttley and illustrated by Margaret Tempest.-Characters:* Little Grey Rabbit* Hare* Milkman Hedgehog* Mrs Hedgehog* Fuzzypeg, a hedgehog...
.
In other media
- The Mysteries of Alfred HedgehogThe Mysteries of Alfred HedgehogThe Mysteries of Alfred Hedgehog, a.k.a. Les Mystères d'Alfred, is an animated French-Canadian co-production made by Gaumont-Alphanim with distribution by Muse Entertainment Enterprises that airs on several broadcast and cable networks around the world. The show's characters consist of mainly...
stars an anthropomorphised hedgehog.
- Sonic the HedgehogSonic the Hedgehog (character), trademarked Sonic The Hedgehog, is a video game character and the main protagonist of the Sonic video game series released by Sega, as well as in numerous spin-off comics, cartoons, and a feature film. The first game was released on June 23, 1991, to provide Sega with a mascot to rival Nintendo's...
is Sega'sSega, usually styled as SEGA, is a multinational video game software developer and an arcade software and hardware development company headquartered in Ōta, Tokyo, Japan, with various offices around the world...
anthropomorphicAnthropomorphismAnthropomorphism is any attribution of human characteristics to animals, non-living things, phenomena, material states, objects or abstract concepts, such as organizations, governments, spirits or deities. The term was coined in the mid 1700s...
corporate mascot and one of the stars of the video game series of the same name, four TV series, OVA, and four comic series, one published in the USASonic the Hedgehog (comics)Sonic the Hedgehog is an ongoing series of American comic books published by Archie Comics, featuring Sega's mascot video game character of the same name. The comic book series debuted in the United States as a 4 part mini-series published between November 1992 and February 1993...
and one in the UKSonic the ComicSonic the Comic, known to its many readers as STC, was a UK children's comic published fortnightly by Fleetway Editions between 1993 and 2002...
. Aside from being bipedal and cobalt blueCobalt blueCobalt blue is a cool, slightly desaturated blue color, historically made using cobalt salts of alumina. It is used in certain ceramics and painting; the different cobalt pigment smalt, based on silica, is more often used directly in tinted transparent glasses...
, he resembles a real hedgehog, having large spines and a penchant for curling into a spiky ball. Among his many co-stars are three more hedgehogs: Amy RoseAmy Rose, known earlier as Rosy the Rascal, is a video game character who appears in most of the Sonic the Hedgehog series of video games developed by Sega's Sonic Team, debuting in Sonic CD as the third recurring protagonist. Amy Rose was created by Kazuyuki Hoshino and based on one of Kenji Terada's...
, ShadowShadow the Hedgehogis a character from the Sonic the Hedgehog series. Shadow is an artificially-created life form. His trademark hover shoes propel him at extreme speeds that rival those of Sonic, and with a Chaos Emerald he has the ability to distort time and space using "Chaos Control." Often referred to as being...
, and Silver. Other hedgehogs in the TV Series were Sonia, Manic, Queen Aleena and Uncle Chuck.
- Mr. Pricklepants is an animated, stuffed toy hedgehog from the 2010 Disney/PixarPixarPixar Animation Studios, pronounced , is an American computer animation film studio based in Emeryville, California. The studio has earned 26 Academy Awards, seven Golden Globes, and three Grammy Awards, among many other awards and acknowledgments. Its films have made over $6.3 billion worldwide...
film Toy Story 3Toy Story 3Toy Story 3 is a 2010 American 3D computer-animated comedy-adventure film, and the third installment in the Toy Story series. It was produced by Pixar and released by Walt Disney Pictures. It was directed by Lee Unkrich. The film was released worldwide from June through October in Disney Digital...
. He is voiced by actor Timothy DaltonTimothy DaltonTimothy Peter Dalton ) is a Welsh actor of film and television. He is known for portraying James Bond in The Living Daylights and Licence to Kill , as well as Rhett Butler in the television miniseries Scarlett , an original sequel to Gone with the Wind...
.
- Lindsfarne Dewclaw, from the online comic strip Kevin and KellKevin and KellKevin and Kell is a furry comedy webcomic strip by syndicated cartoonist Bill Holbrook. The strip began on September 3, 1995. It is one of the oldest continuously running webcomics....
is a hedgehog. She is highly intelligent, and is studying to be a scientist, fascinated with genetics, astronomy and spaceflight. She has recently graduated from university with her bachelor's degree and married her high school sweetheart Fenton Fuscus, a bat.
- Jeż JerzyJez JerzyJeż Jerzy is a popular Polish comic book title created by young artists - Rafał Skarżycki and Tomasz Lew Leśniak ....
(George the Hedgehog in English) is a Polish comic bookPolish comicsPolish comics are comics written and produced in Poland. Very few of these comics have been published in languages other than Polish.- History :...
title written by Rafał Skarżycki and drawn by Tomasz Lew Leśniak.
- Igel Ärgern is a popular German board game, first published in 1990 by Doris Matthaus & Frank Nestel (the makers of Ursuppe). The title roughly translates as "Hedgehog Irking," but the game is usually called "Hedgehogs in a Hurry" in English. In the game, each player races a team of four hedgehogs across a track, avoiding mud pits and occasionally piling atop one another.
- In a 1970 episode of Monty Python's Flying CircusMonty Python's Flying CircusMonty Python’s Flying Circus is a BBC TV sketch comedy series. The shows were composed of surreality, risqué or innuendo-laden humour, sight gags and observational sketches without punchlines...
, there was a fake news profile of a crime lord named Dinsdale PiranhaPiranha Brothers"Piranha Brothers" is a Monty Python sketch, first seen in Series 2, Episode 1 of Monty Python's Flying Circus, originally transmitted on September 15, 1970...
, a notorious criminal known for nailing people's heads to floors. Piranha believed a giant invisible hedgehog named "Spiny Norman" was following him everywhere, and when he came to believe Spiny Norman was hiding out in an aeroplane hangarHangarA hangar is a closed structure to hold aircraft or spacecraft in protective storage. Most hangars are built of metal, but other materials such as wood and concrete are also sometimes used...
, he blew the hangar up with a nuclear bomb. During the closing credits of the show, Spiny Norman is seen stalking LondonLondonLondon is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
and shouting "Dinsdale!" A link to the script can be found here.
- In 1981 an Album called 'Hedgehog Sandwich' was released by BBC records, featuring comedy sketches from the Not the Nine O'Clock NewsNot the Nine O'Clock NewsNot the Nine O'Clock News is a television comedy sketch show which was broadcast on BBC 2 from 1979 to 1982.Originally shown as a comedy "alternative" to the BBC Nine O'Clock News on BBC 1, it featured satirical sketches on current news stories and popular culture, as well as parody songs, comedy...
television series.
- In the Israeli version of Sesame StreetSesame StreetSesame Street has undergone significant changes in its history. According to writer Michael Davis, by the mid-1970s the show had become "an American institution". The cast and crew expanded during this time, including the hiring of women in the crew and additional minorities in the cast. The...
, Rechov Sumsum, one of the main characters was a pink human-sized, orange spiked hedgehog named "Kippy Ben Kippod " (Kippy Hedgehogson). The same character later appeared in the Israeli/Palestinian co-production of the series, Rechov Sumsum Shara'a SimsimRechov Sumsum Shara'a SimsimRechov Sumsum is an Israeli educational television program for preschoolers, based on the popular U.S. children's show "Sesame Street"....
- In the Spanish version of Sesame StreetSesame StreetSesame Street has undergone significant changes in its history. According to writer Michael Davis, by the mid-1970s the show had become "an American institution". The cast and crew expanded during this time, including the hiring of women in the crew and additional minorities in the cast. The...
, one of the main characters was a pink human-sized hedgehog called "Espinete" (little spine).
- In Anime Meimi Haneoka pet cutie Saint TailSaint Tail, is a magical girl manga and anime series. Originally a twenty-four part manga by Megumi Tachikawa, the story was brought to television anime by producer Tokyo Movie Shinsha, with forty-three episodes and one short, broadcast by ABC...
, one of the main characters with and when Tiny Hedgehog is name Ruby Female hedgehog talking you along hedgehog called "Ruby" (Red)
- Hedgehog in the FogHedgehog in the FogHedgehog in the Fog is a 1975 Soviet/Russian animated film directed by Yuriy Norshteyn, produced by the Soyuzmultfilm studio in Moscow. The Russian script was written by Sergei Grigoryevich Kozlov, who also published a book under the same name...
is a 1975 animation directed by Yuriy NorshteynYuriy NorshteynYuriy Borisovich Norshteyn , or Yuri Norstein is an award-winning Soviet and Russian animator best known for his animated shorts, Hedgehog in the Fog and Tale of Tales...
about a hedgehog who travels through a very foggy wood to visit his friend, a bear.
- Harry Hedgehog is an enemy in Yoshi's Island. He is an enemy that runs around and extends his quills when Yoshi gets near.
- Megaman 3 on the NESNes-Localities:In Norway:* Nes, Akershus, a municipality in the county of Akershus in Norway* Nes, Buskerud, a municipality in the county of Buskerud in Norway* Nes, Hedmark, a former municipality in the county of Hedmark in Norway...
had a robotic hedgehog enemy in Needleman's stage, referred to as "Needle Harry" in Nintendo Power. In Megaman II on the Gameboy, this enemy returns along with Needleman, and in "list of enemies" at the end is referred to as "Hari Harry" (note that in Japanese a hedgehog is a "Hari Nezumi" or literally a "needle mouse") It attacks by firing its spines, and can also roll, during which it is invulnerable.
- In the "Timeless Time" episode of the BBC television show One Foot in the GraveOne Foot in the GraveOne Foot in the Grave is a BBC television sitcom series written by David Renwick. The show ran for six series, including seven Christmas specials, two Comic Relief specials, over an eleven year period, from early 1990 to late 2000...
, Victor, on his way back into the house in the early morning hours of returning from turning off his faulty car alarm, accidentally steps into a rotting hedgehog and walks it into the house, like a slipper.
- In Katekyo Hitman Reborn, Kyoha Hibari uses a hedgehog nicknamed Roll as one of his signature weapons besides his tonfas.
- In the final episode of the second series of Bottom Richie mistakingly believes that Red indians eat hedgehogs and Eddie Hitler mistakes a hedgehog for a womble
- The Incredible String Band has a song called 'The Hedgehog's Song' in their album The 5000 Spirits or the Layers of the Onion. It was written by Mike Heron.