Hedgehogs have appeared widely in popular and folk culture, particularly in Europe, one of their native continents. Though not native to Oceania, hedgehogs have been introduced to New Zealand, leading to their appearance in New Zealand's culture. With many prominent roles in folktales, hedgehogs are also common in modern culture and media, with appearances in books, video games, television shows, and films.
Europe
As animals native to Europe and Africa, hedgehogs hold a place in European folklore.. English abstract also available separately.
In most European countries, hedgehogs are believed to be a hard-working, no-nonsense animal. This is partially derived from the myth 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 author Pliny the Elder mentions hedgehogs gathering grapes by this method in his Naturalis Historia. In the Prophecies of Merlin, as recounted by Geoffrey of Monmouth in the 12th century, several references are made to hedgehogs carrying apples, while 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. However, hedgehogs do not gather food to store for later consumption, relying on their deposited fat to survive hibernation. Nor is apple included in their usual diet (it has been suggested, however, that the hedgehogs may use the juice of wild apples to get rid of parasites, similar to anting). 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; as late as the 19th century, some English villagers even believed that these creatures would suck milk out of cows' udders."Hedgehogs" in: In reality, however, hedgehogs are lactose-intolerant.
Hedgehogs are also often seen in pictures with an autumn-themed background since the animal hibernates in piles of leaves. This also adds to the cute reputation of hedgehogs. In Great Britain, however, the human habit of lighting bonfires to celebrate Bonfire Night on 5 November 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 throughout Europe. A large number of hedgehogs were killed by traffic, and since the hedgehog was widely seen as a cute, friendly animal, the choice was effective.
In a Veps legend, the (female) hedgehog appears in a creation myth. According to it, early on, there was no dry land; the entire world was just a big lake. It was a giant hedgehog that brought soil and sand with its needles, creating dry land.
A hedgehog plays a role in a Lithuanian and Latvian creation story as well: when God made heaven and earth, he did not take good measurements, so the earth was made larger than the heaven; on the hedgehog's wise suggestion, God squeezed the earth, so that it would fit into the heaven. (In some versions of the legend, the process of "shrinking" the earth resulted in the creation of mountain ranges). To reward the clever hedgehog, God equipped him with a suite of needles. A similar legend is attested among the Banat Bulgarians and Romanians as well., quoted in: Tales From The Past – Folklore, Fairy Tales, Mythology and Magic
The wisdom of the hedgehog is presented in other folk legends in the Balkans as well. In a Bulgarian legend, the Sun decided to marry the Moon and invited all the animals to the wedding. The hedgehog was the only one who failed to appear. The Sun went to look for the hedgehog and found him gnawing on a stone. When the Sun inquired what he was doing, the hedgehog explained: "I am learning to eat stones. Once you marry, you'll have many Sun children born to you, and when they all shine in the sky, everything will burn, and there will be nothing to eat". The Sun then decided to call off the wedding, and the world's inhabitants were saved from starvation.One version of this story, called СОНЧЕВАТА ЖЕНИДБА (The Sun's Wedding), was collected by Marko Cepenkov in the 19th century, in what is today North Macedonia; in it, the hedgehog (who rides a donkey) offers stones to his donkey to eat. In another version of the story, it is a tortoise rather than a hedgehog who warns the sun about the consequences of the wedding; in yet another version, it is an old man who offers a piece of quartz to his donkey. These other two versions can be found e.g. in Predanija i Legendi, ed. Kiril Penuševski, Skopje, 1969.
In the Balkan Slavic and Belarusian folklore, the wise hedgehog (along with the tortoise) sometimes appears as the animal capable of finding the raskovnik, a magic plant that could be used to open locks and to find hidden treasures."Raskovnik" (Расковник) in:
In many Balkan (Bulgarian, Macedonian,Song no. 28 ("Свадба отъ ракови-те' [Lobsers' Wedding]) in the Bulgarian Folk Songs. Edited by the Miladinov brothers. Zagreb, 1861. Greek, based on Song no. 195 from Panagiotis Aravantinos' "Συλλογή δημωδών ασμάτων της Ηπείρου" (Athens, 1880)) folk songs the (male) hedgehog often appears romantically interested in a (female) tortoise. His advances are usually unwelcome, and the tortoises often resort to legal means to deal with the harasser.
United States
Hedgehogs remain largely unseen in modern-day American culture. On several occasions, British educational programmes have been revised to refer to hedgehogs as porcupines (at least one such example being Bob the Builder and Littlest Pet Shop). The Wacky Wheels 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, the video game character created by Yuji Naka and Naoto Ohshima for SEGA.
May has been designated Hedgehog Month by the International Hedgehog Association.
Oceania
New Zealand's McGillicuddy Serious Party 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, via which they also appeared on a postage stamp. Meanwhile, Nikki Slade Robinson and James Antoniou's children's picture book "Hedgehog Heart", published by New Zealand's Duck Creek Press, uses a hedgehog as a metaphor.
Technology A hedgehog transformer is an early type of electrical transformer designed to work at audio frequencies (AF). They resemble hedgehogs in size, colour and shape and were used in the first part of the 20th century.
Cuisine
A "hedgehog cake" recipe appears in English cookbooks as early as the 18th century.
"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"The Forme of Cury, A Roll of Ancient English Cookery, Compiled, about A.D. 1390, by the Master-Cooks of King Richard II, Presented afterwards to Queen Elizabeth, by Edward Lord Stafford", contains a recipe for sausages "made after an urchoun [i.e., hedgehog] withoute legges" with "smale prikkes of gode past [pastry]". http://www.fullbooks.com/The-Forme-of-Cury2.html and was referenced in an episode of Two Fat Ladies.
Hedgehogs in popular culture
In books In Good to Great by James C. Collins, he describes a fundamental attribute of successful businesses as their "Hedgehog Concept". "Hans My Hedgehog" is a German fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm. 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 who is a hedgehog from the waist up. After many trials Hans My Hedgehog marries a princess and becomes a handsome young man. An even more popular tale in this collection, "The Hare and the Hedgehog", is about the race between a hare, who is proud of his swift legs, and a hedgehog. The hedgehog teams up with his wife who hides on the other side of the field across which the hare and the hedgehog are to race. The hedgehog does not race all the way but simply cowers in his furrow after a few steps. When the hare has crossed the field, Mrs. Hedgehog raises her head on the other side and announces "I am here already." They repeat the race until finally, the hare dies of exhaustion. The story illustrates the dangers of pride on the side of the hare who cannot overcome the common hedgehog's cunning. The French author the Comtesse de Ségur devotes a chapter in the children's classic Les petites filles modèles 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 Wonderland, the Queen of Hearts uses hedgehogs and flamingoes to play croquet. Beatrix Potter's Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle stars a hedgehog. Two hedgehogs of the school-child age feature in Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. In the 1927 British detective novel The Ellerby Case by John Rhode, in the chapter entitled "The Green Hedgehog," Doctor Lancelot Priestly, the investigator who solves the case, is nearly murdered by a hedgehog dyed green whose spines have been impregnated with a virulent poison. British author Terry Pratchett incorporates hedgehogs into several of his Discworld novels, and one of the characters is known for singing a lewd song called "The Hedgehog Can Never Be Buggered at All". Jan Brett 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's book series, Redwall. Dick King-Smith has written a story for younger children about a family of hedgehogs threatened by traffic, The Hodgeheg. In The Animals of Farthing Wood by British author Colin Dann, 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 Berlin, in The Hedgehog and the Fox, takes the hedgehog as the type of person who knows "one big thing", as opposed to the fox, who knows many things. This was taken from a poem by Archilochus. Similarly, Stephen Jay Gould refers to a persistent sticking to one strategy, "hedgehog-like" behaviour in his discourse on the humanities versus science in The Hedgehog, the Fox, and the Magister's Pox. In Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories, a Hedgehog named Stickly-Prickly is one of the main protagonists in the story "The Beginning of the Armadillos". One of the most popular book-length children's poems in Serbian is Branko Ćopić's Ježeva kućica, (The Hedgehog's Little House) Fuzzypeg, a friend of Little Grey Rabbit. Yona, the Hedgehog, is a mythical character in Richard Adams' Watership Down. Shakespeare referenced hedgehogs in The Tempest and Midsummer Night’s Dream. He referred to them as "hedgepigs" and "urchins." Kiroileva siili (Finnish for "The swearing hedgehog") is a comic strip written and drawn by Finnish artist Milla Paloniemi.
In other media