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If you think there’s not much difference between a hedgehog and a porcupine, you may be surprised to find out just how different they could be! Here’s what we found out.

While you won’t find hedgehogs in North or South America, you may cross paths with a porcupine. Snub-nosed and pigeon-toed, a large porcupine weighs in at a hefty 15 pounds, almost four times as heavy as an average, pointy-snouted hedgehog. A funny thing about porcupines is that they have four toes on their front feet and five toes on their back feet!

While a hedgehog has about 7,000 one-inch quills visible all over his back and head, a porcupine carries about 30,000 two-inch quills concealed under a thick coat of fur on his rump and tail. (Hedgehogs don’t really have much of a tail.)

Hedgehogs protect themselves by rolling up into a ball and their quills simply create an impenetrable barrier. Porcupines arch their backs, making the quills stand straight up. They also thrash their armored tails back and forth to hit an attacker. The porcupine quills are easily detached and when a porcupine hits a predator with its tail, the barbed tips painfully pierce the attacker’s hide. The barbs expand and force the quill points deeper and deeper into the attacker’s body.

Gardeners may love hedgehogs for all the bugs and slugs they can eat, but porcupines would wreak havoc in a yard. Their vegetarian preferences are flower buds, leaves, grass, and herbs.

Porcupines don’t hibernate like hedgehogs. Instead, when winter comes they clamber into the trees and spend most of their time above the wet and cold snow. Their winter menu includes the inner bark of trees and the needles on pines and other evergreens. With their sharp teeth they even chew on the antlers that deer have shed for the salt and calcium they contain.

Baby porcupines are known as “porcupettes”. Most often, only one baby is born. It is born with quills that are about an inch long. At first they are very soft, but within a few hours they harden into defensive weapons. By the time a porcupette is only 10 days old it can climb up and down trees better than any hedgehog.