North American Porcupine

Lifestyle

Highly adaptable, North American porcupines can live in tundra, rangeland, and desert, in addition to their preferred woodland habitats. These animals don’t see well, but have strong senses of hearing and smell, and sniff the air almost constantly. They are mainly nocturnal, but sometimes forage during the day. Porcupines mostly move about alone, but sometimes pairs will share a feeding tree, and occasionally they will den together. Dens are constructed in caves, hollow logs, burrows, snowbanks, or on tree branches.

North American porcupines use their quills—which cover the entire body except the stomach—for defense. These animals are not known for being aggressive, and will climb or flee if confronted by a predator. They only lash out with their barbed tails as a last resort. Contrary to popular belief, porcupines can’t shoot their quills.

Food

North American porcupines are herbivores. They eat buds, roots, stems, leaves, berries, and nuts during spring and summer, and turn to evergreen needles and tree bark in winter. Porcupines are big eaters—they can consume a pound of food a day, nearly 10 percent of their body weight!

Life Cycle

At the start of courtship, porcupine females call to males with high-pitched vocalizations, attracting prospective suitors who compete with one another to determine dominance. Before mating, a male serenades the female with a series of grunts, then performs an elaborate kind of dance. A porcupine mother usually gives birth to one baby between April and June. The juveniles are precocious foragers and self-defenders, but depend on their mothers for up to six months for lessons on how to identify food trees and to locate dens and other types of hiding places and shelters. Unlike many other mammals, young females move away from their mothers’ ranges, but young males remain nearby. North American porcupines can live 15 years.

Some of My Neighbors

Great horned owl, bobcat, wolverine, fisher, black bear

Population Status & Threats

The North American porcupine is not threatened; however, hunting and persecution by humans have caused populations to decline in the eastern U.S. and parts of the Midwest. Porcupines are targeted by the timber and agriculture industry due to certain destructive behaviors, particularly their taste for trees and certain crops, such as corn. Vehicle collisions are also a regular threat. Until some time ago, bounties and poisoning were sometimes used to control their numbers.

WCS Conservation Efforts

Scientists with the WCS-North America Program are studying the effects of urbanization and sprawl on various wildlife populations, including black bears and other neighbors of the North American porcupine.