What Is Hedgehog Anointing?

Are you freaking out because you've never seen a hedgehog anointing? And you've jumped to the fatal conclusion that surely it's dying? It can be scary and hard to determine if something is wrong with a hedgie. That's why Tina from Utah wrote in and asked, “What is hedgehog anointing?”

We've already written about this in our article Hedgehog Anointing Explored, but this video gives a live demonstration as Quilly talks about the process. He also mentions that it can affect humans by giving them hedgehog hives, which you can read more about here.

This video was made by joining footage from four of five Wyze cameras we personally use. They are there to monitor Quilly's well being, his silly Quilly antics, and to capture real footage to hedgucate our audience. We highly recommend having at least one to monitor your hedgehog's well-being.

Hey hedgie fans! I know it’s been a while since I did a new Ask Quilly video. It’s been pretty busy over at Heavenly Hedgies and my human hasn’t been able to help me with it.

We recently had Tina from Utah write and ask, “What is hedgehog anointing?” She was afraid that her hedgehog was vomiting and wanted to know what the difference was.

I know it can be pretty scary for first-time hedgie owners when they see their hedgehog anointing. Many new owners think the same thing that Tina thought. . . that their hedgehog was vomiting. Some owners (like my human) thought the first time she saw a hedgehog anointing that it was having a seizure.

The background video demonstrates hedgehog anointing so you can physically identify it. Part of it is me and part of it was shared by my friend Ruby of her hedgehog Draco.

Do you see the way the body contorts and a foamy spit is deposited onto the quills? That’s hedgehog anointing! The contorting lets you know it’s anointing and not vomiting or a seizure.

There’s an article on my website called Hedgehog Anointing Explored. It goes over the various theories about why hedgehogs are believed to anoint…but honestly, nobody knows for sure why we do it…not even me.

I personally don’t like anointing. Every time my human has given me delicious new foods, I usually anoint with it. And even though the food tastes great and I want to eat more, I know that it will make me anoint. After two to four anointings, I’ll just walk away from it even though I want it.

In fact, if you watch the background video carefully, you’ll see that I started to go back towards the bowl and then turned away. The great taste wasn’t worth all the contortion and strain.

Another reason I don’t like anointing is that it makes my human break out in hedgehog hives when she gets poked by my quills after I’ve anointed. And that makes me sad. We have a great article about hedgehog hives on the website that my friend Lisa wrote.

Thanks for writing in Tina. The next time you see your hedgie do this, hopefully it doesn’t scare you because anointing is a completely natural thing for a hedgehog to do.

Also keep in mind that not all hedgehogs actually like anointing and the only way to know for sure is to observe them over time with a camera.

If you want to learn about hedgehogs, you can learn all about us on my website. If there’s something specific you can’t find there, you can always ask me.

If you learned anything from this video, please comment, like, and subscribe.

Until next time….bye for now!

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